In Human Potential We Trust

I’ve been thinking lately about some of the ideas that struck me most strongly when reading Paulo Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed back at BYU—most of all the principle that those who would help to liberate the oppressed must work with and trust in the ability of those they are trying to help.

"Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation….Our converts, on the other hand, truly desire to transform the unjust order; but because of their background they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation….A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle."

"Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building."

"It is necessary to trust in the oppressed and in their ability to reason."

"At all stages of their liberation, the oppressed must themselves as people engaged in the vocation of becoming more fully human. Reflection and action become essential. True reflection leads to action but that action will only be a genuine praxis if there is critical reflection on its consequences. To achieve this praxis it is necessary to trust in the oppressed and their ability to reason. Whoever lacks this trust will fail to bring about, or will abandon, dialogue, reflection and communication, and will fall into using slogans, communiques, monologues and instructions."

In the time I’ve been here in Mozambique working with Care For Life, it’s been easy to note tons of examples of outsiders both trusting and not trusting locals—and it’s struck me how it’s often the same people who are trusting in one moment and not trusting in the next. When working through an NGO or other development organization, or even in the work that needs to be done in the Church, it’s easy to be schizophrenic with how much you’re willing to trust and put power in locals’ hands. I’ve always kind of prided myself on being a big believer in the capacity and ability of all, but then I’ve found myself in a lot of moments where it’s a lot easier to make an executive decision, or where, for whatever reason, despite all I’ve said about letting locals make the decisions, I don’t, often in situations where in retrospect it would’ve made all the sense in the world to have done so. And I see the same thing all the time in others, too (it tends to be easier to notice in others :) ).

As I’ve thought about that, I think that’s why this theme is one that Freire returns to again and again in Pedagogy of the Oppressed—because it is a principle that, to be effective, must be implemented completely. In helping people to liberate themselves, there is no halfway point of trust—there is either trust (in their ideas, in their reasoning, in their ability to raise themselves) or there is lack of trust. The more I think about it, the more and more I realize that I have a lot of trusting to do.