Disabilità e oppressione

For Paulo Freire there is no education but through the liberation of people from oppression.The purpose of education is the emancipation of people and, therefore, the possibility of givingthem the right and the duty of the word and educate them in the light of liberation and forfreedom.According to the Brazilian educator, this must be done especially for the oppressed, who arereawakened to awareness, which implies the consciousness raising of each individual with regardsto their personal and collective condition, and the ability to express themselves.The Pedagogy of the oppressed, as humanistic and liberating pedagogy, is divided into twodifferent moments:“... the first in which the oppressed discover the world of oppression and engage in practices totransform it; the second in which, having the oppressive reality been transformed, the pedagogy ofthe oppressed no longer exists and it becomes pedagogy of the men who are going through theprocess of permanent liberation ... “ (Freire, 2011).The pedagogical method adopted by Freire is based on the socialization process, the dialogue andthe awakening of the most disadvantaged groups. Examples of these are people with disabilitieswhose fear of freedom has to be removed, as pointed out by Freire, the very fear which theaffected ones are not aware of“…the condition which the disabled person lives when they find themselves in a situation ofexclusion and marginalization is often a real dehumanizing condition that annihilates their desireto be loved and recognized as well as their desire to understand and to act, and to be free ... Thecondition of alienation and addiction creates –at the same time- in the disabled person a sense offailure that may end up neutralizing all their vital energy; they will end up adjusting passively,that is living the condition of not being ...”. (Goussot, 2009).But, for Freire “... when a person realizes that not only does he live but he also exists, hediscovers the root of his temporal dimension; that is, by overcoming the unidimensionality of time,he becomes aware of the past, the present and the future...” (Freire, 2007).According to a more traditional vision, disability essentially represents a rehabilitative individualproblem. Persons affected by a disability find it necessarily difficult to accomplish the so-callednormal tasks and, therefore, they are also hindered to fulfill normal social roles. In this sense, thesocial disadvantage normally associated with disability in modern societies is seen as an individual problem caused by impairment.As an alternative to this, some English scholars designed around the 70’s the “social model”which, instead of focusing on individual deficits, approaches to disability, focusing the analysis onprocesses and social forces that cause people with obvious impairments to become disabled.As stated in the social model, disability is not in the person itself but it is the result of exclusionfrom the complete social participation; furthermore, the exclusion is not inevitable nor necessary,and the disabled are an oppressed social group, not just individuals affected by tragiccircumstances.