The School of Teacher Education (Physical Education) invited Professor Carlos Torres from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (online) and Professor Wang Dan from the University of Hong Kong (online) to conduct an academic seminar on “Paulo Freire’s Educational Thought and Exploration in Rural Education” on the afternoon of June 20. Professor Zhang Fuwei, Dean of the School of Teacher Education (Physical Education), attended the meeting offline, and Dr. Shi Hejia served as the moderator.
The seminar was conducted in a hybrid format, with online sessions broadcast via Zoom and Bilibili, and offline sessions held in the A5 Lecture Hall at the Linhai campus of TU. The conference was conducted with simultaneous translation in Chinese and English.
The seminar began with a keynote speech by Professor Carlos Torres, who introduced Paulo Freire’s educational thought and the historical context of his educational research and practice. Professor Torres emphasized that Freire’s perspective requires demystifying reality and deconstructing frameworks of oppression, domination, violence, and exploitation through “critical questioning”. This necessitates a shift from “cramming” education to “liberated” education, where dialogue inspires students to pursue liberation as active subjects. Professor Torres further delved into Freire’s ideas from epistemological and methodological perspectives, highlighting that education should transcend value neutrality to pursue an utopian ideal, deconstructing and criticizing oppressive structures from humanitarian, social historical, and sociocultural viewpoints.
Professor Wang Dan addressed rural education issues by discussing the definition and manifestations of educational equity. She reviewed disparities in funding, teaching resources, family backgrounds, schools, student mobility/left-behind situations, and academic performance between urban and rural education. Professor Wang pointed out the shortcomings and flaws of the “urbanization” strategy in addressing the uneven distribution of education resources between urban and rural areas. She further noted that rural education reform requires not just equal opportunities for higher education but also knowledge and skills to improve farmers’ lives, build rural communities, and enhance agricultural production. Professor Wang analyzed rural issues and challenges from the perspectives of industrial structure, agricultural product trade, and rural sustainable development, summarizing rural crises as “organizational fragmentation”, “ecological crisis”, “capital exploitation” and “market pressure”. She emphasized that the way forward for rural education must integrate with explorations in “ecological agriculture”, “collective economy” and “population return”.
After the professors’ speeches, both online and offline audiences engaged in a detailed discussion with the professors, addressing questions such as the impact of information technology on education, how teachers can implement Freire’s theories in the classroom, and how to draw lessons from the history of rural education reform in China.
