“PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED” IN RUSSIAN VERSION: ALEXANDER BOGDANOV AND PAULO FREIRE

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the pedagogical ideas of Alexander Bogdanov and Paulo Freire. The author states that the principles of organizing education in the Proletarian University conceived by Bogdanov and in party schools for workers in Capri and Bologna, which he considered as a prototype of this university, are very close to the foundations of the “pedagogy of the oppressed” of P. Freire. At the same time, neither Freire himself nor the researchers of his work mention Bogdanov among his predecessors or inspirers. The article notes that the starting points for forming the basic principles of teaching proposed by Bogdanov and Freire were similar. These were circles in which adult working people learned the basics of literacy – general (in Freire's case) and socio-economic (in Bogdanov's case). Bogdanov's pedagogical ideas followed from his theory of proletarian culture. He believed that the first stage of the socialist revolution should be an ideological revolution among the workers, and only after that, the working class could become the head of the social revolution. Freire reasoned in a similar way: proceeding from the fact that the subordinate position of the oppressed is determined by their objectivity, he believed that “they should abandon the position of things and begin to fight as people”. At the same time, “they cannot join the struggle as objects in order to later become people”. The article also traces the affiliation of ideas underlying Bogdanov's and Freire's educational concepts, and shows that different pedagogical theorists and practitioners, such as N.K. Krupskaya, A.S. Makarenko, and A. Gramsci, developed ideas similar, though not identical, to Bogdanov's and Freire's views.