Experience Teaches Us Not To Assume That

Certain Members Of The Oppressor Class Join The Oppressed In Their Struggle For Liberation.

This Is The Sense In Which I Am Obliged To Be A Listener. To Listen To The Student's Doubts, Fears, And Incompetencies That Are Part Of The Learning Process. It Is In Listening To The Student That I Learn To Speak With Him Or Her.

Education As The Practice Of Freedom--as Opposed To Education As The Practice Of Domination--denies That Man Is Abstract, Isolated, Independent And Unattached To The World; It Also Denies That The World Exists As Reality Apart From People. Authentic Reflection Considers Neither Abstract Man Nor The World Without People, But People In Their Relations With The World. In These Relations Consciousness And World Are Simultaneous: Consciousness Neither Precedes The World Nor Follows It.

Indeed, The Interests Of The Oppressors Lie In 'changing The Consciousness Of The Oppressed, Not The Situation Which Oppresses Them.

True Generosity Consists Precisely In Fighting To Destroy The Causes Which Nourish False Charity. False Charity Constrains The Fearful And Subdued, The "rejects Of Life," To Extend Their Trembling Hands. True Generosity Lies In Striving So That These Hands--whether Of Individuals Or Entire Peoples--need Be Extended Less And Less In Supplication, So That More And More They Become Human Hands Which Work And, Working, Transform The World.