Reddit reviews Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition

Incorrect. Oppressors and oppressed must work together to create a system to hold each other accountable. If oppressors make the system they will continue to oppress as normal, if the oppressed make the system they will oppress their former oppressors out of a desire for retribution and also because each oppressed person only has an oppressor as their reference point for what a "non oppressed" person should be like and how they should behave. Only through cooperation and collaboration can the oppressed and the oppressors overcome the dynamic that keeps both of them stuck into their predetermined roles.

Read "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire.

I would argue for Freire's classic on progressive pedagogy: Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

1. Immediately join whatever teacher union is most popular in your area, probably AFT or NEA. If problems arise, the district's not on your side, but a union will be.
   
2. Get to know your department and try to find a willing mentor to share advice and material with. You'll need someone who can keep your head above water while you learn the craft.
   
3. Read up on classroom behavior management and sociology principles. Content knowledge is far less of a demand than knowing how to run a well-managed classroom. Elliot Aronson's The Social Animal was very enlightening for me as a young teacher struggling to understand behavior issues.
   
4. Be prepared for a very demanding first few years. You'll make thousands of decisions a day interacting with young people that you won't need to make later as a veteran, and it'll exhaust you. Take your vitamins, eat right, and exercise. It'll help with the stress.
   
5. Bonus: Start forming your teaching philosophy, the "purpose" of your job. [Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed](http://www.amazon.com/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Anniversary-Paulo-Freire/dp/0826412769/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448939458&sr=1-1&keywords=paolo+friere) continues to shape my approach to the job, 22 years down the road.
   
   Teaching is a fantastic job, but it's demanding and complicated. Stick with it and you'll be rewarded one day by realizing that teaching isn't what you do, it's who you are. Good luck.

I'm finishing up Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire right now. It's absolutely fantastic, and has already changed the way that I view and frame the world. Basically it's a theory on oppression written in the 60's that proposes a method of empowering oppressed people through dialog and self-reflection. In other words, it's a field guide to understanding and sparking successful education-fueled revolutions. It'll make you think, hard.

Chomsky on Mis-Education

http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Mis-Education-Critical-Perspectives-Dedicated/dp/0742529789

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed

http://www.amazon.com/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Anniversary-Paulo-Freire/dp/0826412769

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Miguel de Unamuno "Tragic Sense of Life"

Paulo Freire "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

John Ruskin "Unto This Last"

William Morris "News From Nowhere"

Marge Piercy "Woman on the Edge of Time"

Aristotle "Nicomachean Ethics"

Tommaso Campanella "City of the Sun" / Michel de Montaigne "Of Cannibals"

Habermas "Philosophical Discourse of Modernity"

Soren Kierkegaard "Either/Or"

Kafka "The Castle"

Lewis Carroll "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There"

Of each, I would do as the King says: start at the beginning, and go on until you reach the end: then stop.