Reading is more than decoding





Paulo Freire - The Importance of the act of reading
Paulo Freire was an adult educator who developed "critical pedagogy" which is an approach to adult education. His best known works are "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" and "Pedagogy of Hope". He believed that education was a pathway to permanent liberation, that people would become aware of their own oppression and change it. In Paulo Freire’s article "The importance of the act of reading'' he states “reading is not exhausted merely by decoding the written word or written language, but rather anticipated by and extending into knowledge of the world” (Freire 5). This article was first presented at the Brazilian Congress of Reading, Campinas, Brazil in 1983.  How we interpret the words written is based on our intimate views and knowledge of our own circle of the world.

Paulo Freire takes us back to his house in Recife, Brazil where he was born and describes to us the birds, trees, and structure of his home. It is here that Paulo begins to learn to read and have his first experiences with letters, texts and words. Every one of our students’ first experiences with the written word is never going to be the exact duplicate of another. “The texts, the words, the letters of that context were incarnated in a series of things, objects, signs…in perceiving these, I experienced myself, and the more I experience myself, the more my perceptual capacity increased” (Freire 6). The texts, letters and words would take on images of items of Freire’s world and the more he read the more images and signs would emerge.

Reading was something Freire did by using words from his world, which was further continued in his education. In his mention of a private school lessons in regards to reading was its’ congruent relationship with reading word-world. In our school systems today it is very important to realize this word-world relationship is different for every student. The images and signs being brought out by texts, letters, and words can be very different from their classmate. In trying to incorporate culturally relevant pedagogical lessons as teachers we can include a variety of different texts and literature in our classroom and expect that each of our students will have different views and understanding of the text.

In Freire’s secondary-school experience, he describes the importance of the act of reading and critically understanding the word. The lessons and exercises were not “aimed at our simply becoming aware of the existence of the page in front of us, to be scanned, mechanically and monotonously spelled out, instead of truly read” (Freire 8). Freire himself taught in a way that did not make his students memorize rules and mechanics of text and words but rather taught in a way that had his students understand its’ underlying significance. Memorizing rules and mechanics does not mean we have knowledge of the text.

The art of teaching someone to read and write is “a political act, an act of knowledge, and therefore as a creative act” (Freire 10). Before we read the word we have to read the world. It is a continuous cycle. In organizing a literacy program from our students as teachers we should prepare one “from the word universe of the people who are learning, expressing their actual language, their anxieties, fears, demands and dreams…it should be laden with the meaning of the people’s existential experience, and not of the teacher’s experience” (Freire 10). In a multicultural setting using this ideology we would use literate works to represent the whole of our classroom.

Conclusions and Recommendations
In today's classrooms we will never have two of the same students with the same background or experiences with the written word and world. Trying to incorporate a culturally relevant curriculum we have to include works to mirror that of our students. We have to understand none of our students will ever have the exact same understanding of certain texts or answers. In our literacy program to be presented in our classroom we must be very careful in selecting types of culturally relevant literary works, many works will indicate the author is of a minority class but it might have been re-edited and re-published by the dominant culture. Teaching is also not just forcing your students to memorize rules and know certain mechanics, teaching is getting students to actively engage and understand the context as it relates to them and how it relates to the world. Reading is an art and is a pathway to power and knowledge.

Author
Elizabeth Herrera, UNM College of Education.