One time I was doing subtle agitating and educating at a place I was working at. I mentioned Paulo Freire and a person sparked up with recognition at the name, saying that they were doing an assignment at university based on Freire.

I asked about it. They said were doing a photovoice project where they were going to take some photos of homeless people and attach quotes from the subjects to the photos to “give them a voice.”

I’m sure I wasn’t completely able to mask my disgust at hearing that. That’s not Freirean, that’s not critical pedagogy, that’s not even photovoice (not gonna go into the weeds on that here), that’s just taking some shots on your disadvantage tourism expedition and concealing a deeply paternalistic and explotative approach to some of the most marginalised people in society for your own benefit. I don’t want to dilute or whitewash the horrors of colonialism by saying this but this is a subtle expression of the same underlying psychology of colonialism; it’s human zoo bullshit, just transposed onto a palatable, bite-sized, socially sanctioned form using the medium of photography.

This is what passes as teaching Freire at that particular university. It’s utterly shameless, and to charge people for it too?