1: Paulo Freire was born in Brazil in 1921, by 1929 he was effected by the great depression. His family had a hard time in the life of poverty trying to find food. As a result of the depression Freire's family moved to a poorer town called Jaboato dos Guararapes, and two years, in 1933 his father died. Throughout his childhood he was surrounded by poverty, this is what shaped his educational viewpoints. In 1943 Freire enrolled at the University of Recife law school, while studying law Freire also studied philosophy, and the psychology of language. Although Freire had his law background he chose to be a Portuguese teacher at a secondary school, where he met his wife. In 1946 Freire was made the director of the department of education and culture in Pernambuco. He mainly worked with the illiterate poor people at this time, and during this time people who were illiterate could not vote in Brazil. In 1961 he was named the director of the Department of Cultural Extension of Recife University. In later years he began to write his book and in 1968 he published his first book; Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In Brazil, his home country the book was not published until 1974 because of the different freedom of speech rights in this country.
2: Paulo Freire's concepts of teacher-student dichotomy is a new way of looking at teaching and how to make a learning experience teach more to the student and also to the teacher. Freire believes that there should be a teacher-student as well as a student-teacher role in the classroom. What Freire means by these two roles is one, teacher-student; a teacher that learns , and second, student-teacher; a student who teaches. Although teachers seem to have all the smarts in a classroom the teacher needs to be open to the fact that the student might teach the teacher something that was not apparent to them before.
3: Paulo Freire's book Pedagogy of the Oppressed was a book that was aimed at his new view of learning and the relationship between the teacher and the student in the learning environment. There were four chapters in Freire's book, these four chapters consisted of the different/new teaching methods or views that he came up with. The first chapter deals with how oppression has been validated, the second chapter deals with his new banking view of education, the third chapter deals with the term "limit-situation" and finally the fourth chapter is about freeing the colonized through his ways of teaching. With his many different view of education his book was not able to be published in his home country Brazil until six years after it was published in other countries, this is because of the freedom of speech issues in Brazil at this time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm
Part 2
1: Amanda--Does not think that the women of Islam will ever be put on the same level as the men of Islam.
2: Eric--Believes the point of Obama's speech is to foster peace and stability
3: Nick--The part that strikes him the most about Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech is the passion he uses when he delivers his speech.
4: Robert--From Obama's speech Robert realized how intertwined the Islamic culture is with American's history.
5: Tuo--Realized the amazing things the muslims have contributed to the world like; poetry, the order of algebra, music, navigation system and the study of disease.
6: Jacob--Watching the speeches made him think more globally.
7: Veronika--Believes Martin Luther King Jr. has helped form our reality as it is now.
8: Wes--Learned that Islam inspired many key educational endeavors such as the renaissance and enlightenment in Europe.
9: Wendy--Feels that Obama's speech is a promising new start that will hopefully be followed up with actionable direction.
10: Lena--Learned about more things that Obama is trying to achieve, like women's rights in other countries.
