In the 80s, as ASPIRA’s director of research and advocacy, you monitored the Board of Ed’s compliance with the decree. Of course, in 1974 the ASPIRA consent decree established bilingual instruction as a legally enforceable entitlement for New York City’s Puerto Rican and other Latinex students. And so critical pedagogy or Freirean pedagogy is very much tied to the concept that we go to school, we get, we become educated, we work with other students, with teachers, our parents and others to liberate our mind, to liberate our bodies and ourselves from oppression, from ignorance, and to use that education and knowledge to make change and to make democratic change (small r, small d) in the societies in which we live.Īmy H-L: 05:00 Luis, a big part of that is language. And Paolo Freire was an educator leader in Latin America who pushed for education as part of a view of the world that says education has to be part of liberating individuals to participate fully in their life in this society. John Dewey obviously is a very famous and noted progressive educator leader in the United States affecting education throughout the world, not just the United States.
Luis R: 03:15 He did say that and that has been respected all these years. There’s no element of any part of Puerto Rican society trying to recover his remains irregardless of Puerto Rico’s status. Jon M: 03:10 And didn’t he say that he didn’t want his body to be returned to Puerto Rico until it was independent? He’s actually buried in the Dominican Republic and is revered there as he is in Puerto Rico. Eugenio María de Hostos, a Puerto Rican educator after whom Hostos Community College in the South Bronx is named, was one of the preeminent leaders in education in Puerto Rico and in the Caribbean as part of the Confederación Antillana. Luis R: 01:25 I think the relevance of John Dewey and Paulo Freire and Eugenio María de Hostos is that these were all men who were educators, leaders of movements to ensure that education was not just about rote memory or about testing, but education in pursuit of living in a democratic society and living a fully participating, using one’s mind, one’s will and one’s understanding of the social realities of our times to ensure that education becomes an instrument, not of dictating to people who they are, what they know or what they must do, but giving them the tools to help be co-creators of their own reality. What’s the relevance of these perspectives for schools today? You have talked about the influence on your work of Eugenio María de Hostos and Paolo Freire, who talked about education in the context of liberation. Jon M: 01:06 John Dewey wrote about schools modeling democracy and preparing students for democratic citizenship.
He was a member of the New York city Board of Education from 1990 through 1998 and has been an educator for more than 48 years.
Regent Reyes is the Director of Education at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. Reyes is member of the New York state Board of Regents, the body that oversees all educational activities in the state, including the New York State Education Department. Welcome to ethical schools, where we discuss strategies creating inclusive and equitable schools and youth programs that help students to develop both commitment and capacity to build ethical institutions.Īmy H-L: 00:33 Our guest today is Dr.