Beyond the Mask of Technology: Educational Equity
and the Pedagogy of Hope1
Charles Underwood, Jelani Mahiri, Cecilia Toloza, and Dirce Pranzetti
Technology is a word that in everyday contemporary parlance masks the back
regions of a sociocultural terrain whose stratigraphy continues to be defined by certain
invidious distinctions. Talk about technology and education divides along a fault line
between those who attempt to project happy scenes of classrooms full of excited
children huddled around computer screens with smiley faces, and those warning about
the perils lurking behind the screen's satanic grin. With the enormous multi-national
effort to load schools up with new wiring and computers (even if they are more often
than not castoff machines), the issues of real availability and access to useful and
useable tools are often disguised, caught in webs of significance that remain unspoken
and unexamined. Anthropologists can play a crucial role both in offering a hard look
at technology and also in playing a more activist role in helping to extend access to
youth from excluded populations while working with educators to shape technology-
based learning activities that give those youth greater power over their own learning
about the world and their place in it.
It is customary for scholars to build their arguments on the most recent
findings, dating back no more than a decade or so. While this practice has the effect
of demonstrating how up to date we are as scholars, we prefer here to reach back a bit
further into the anthropological repertoire and show how up to date the work of
another scholar is. We look at two classic articles from the last century by
anthropologist Gerald Berreman (1962, 1988) and suggest how their combined
conceptual hardware equips us to understand clearly and account for ourselves
unequivocally in order to act upon a complex contemporary phenomenon.
I.
"Nearly every school is now equipped with computers, and over two-thirds of
our nation's children have access at home," (Shields and Behram 2000:4) reports a
recent article on the positive and negative effects of children's use of computer
technology in the U.S. Widespread coverage in the mass media cite the Center for
Educational Statistics' recent findings that approximately 96 percent of schools in the
United States are connected to the internet. For those of us who have actually spent
time in schools, particularly those in low-income communities, these assertions are at
best puzzling examples of extraordinary wishful thinking and at worst exemplars of
institutional impression management on the grandest of scales. The reported data
Underwood, Mahiri, Toloza, & Pranzetti
themselves are as verifiable and methodologically reliable as the results of a Florida
election.
As part of a multi-regional study of technology availability, access, and use in
what the California legislature calls "low-performing schools," a number of
University of California researchers have begun conducting intensive ethnographic
observations of resource-poor schools serving diverse students from low-income
communities throughout California. Preliminary results suggest that connectivity in
these schools and communities-including the basic capacity to conduct electricity-
is at best problematic and often nonexistent. In some cases, principals and teachers in
these schools expressed the belief that their schools were wired for the internet
because, in fact, wires had been installed along their corridors; in most cases, the
hallway wires were not connected-they had no drop lines-into any classroom. In
other cases, classroom or computer labs had computers in place but not enough plugs
or insufficient wattage to make use of the computers practicable. Interestingly, even
in schools where computer technology was adequately in place, access to their use
was closely guarded by gatekeepers-teachers who had been given the role of
technology specialists because they know how to use a computer and who came to
view the computer lab as their personal domain to protect. As a result, certain
teachers in these schools gain access and not others, and certain students-certain
categories of student-tend to get access while others either do not or are allowed to
engage only in limited tasks assumed to be at their level of ability.
Ironically, our work in after-school and out-of-school programs suggests that
building meaningful learning activities around computer technologies works well for
youth who are out of school or not doing well in school. This article focuses on
aspects of such programs and is based on several years' experience of work and
observations in California and Brazil. We focus here on an out-of-school program
working with "street children" in Brazil (we use the quoted term advisedly, as
discussed below). These programs are, of course, what the Brazilian architect and
urbanist Jorge Wilhelm has called islands of access in an ocean of exclusion (Wilhelm
2000). Whenever we discuss them, the questions of the "scalability" of these efforts
to "serve" more youth and the "viability" of the "interventions" for children and youth
living in these circumstances are frequently raised. Through a combined focus on
status and social interaction as they relate to the co-construction of nonhierarchical
pedagogical relationships, and through examining the role of technological innovation
in the transformation of social interactions and relationships, we hope to suggest the
power of these programmatic activities in creating, for disenfranchised youth, the
sustained sense of the possible and the preferable we call hope-a value-laden word
which, as we describe at more length below, we use to indicate not just a nice feeling
but in actuality the pragmatic invention of necessity.
It is not surprising that the rapid emergence of new technologies has both
followed and revealed the fault lines of social stratification. It is not surprising that
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exclusion from technology availability and access follows socially defined notions of
race, ethnicity, and caste, just as it is not surprising that children living in poverty in
both Brazil and the United States happen to be subject to inclusion within certain
birth-ascribed social categories and happen to perform poorly in formal educational
settings. "Inclusion and exclusion have become important concepts for analyzing and
responding to inequality because of changes affecting the class structure of the
industrial countries," as Giddens (1998:103) has suggested. "Computer-aided design
and customization, automated storage and distributions systems, and the integration of
production with suppliers and customers have all replaced work previously done by
hand" (Giddens 1998:103). Understanding the social processes of inclusion and
exclusion has accordingly become a crucial theoretical and practical concern.
Importantly, this focus is not of peripheral significance to anthropology. It is not
about processes of social mobility or adaptation. "Exclusion is not about gradations
of inequality, but about mechanisms that act to detach groups of people from the
social mainstream" (Giddens 1998:104).
The question is: how do these mechanisms of exclusion work interactionally
in the context of systems of birth-ascribed systems of social stratification? It is at this
juncture that the analysis of stratified society and the interpretation of culture as
symbolic interaction come together as a unified field (Berreman 1962, 1988). As
Berreman once noted,
The consequences of birth-ascribed stratification," as someone once
noted, "are self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating, for although low
status groups do not adopt views of themselves or their statuses which
are consistent with the views held by their superiors, they are
continually acting them out and cannot avoid internalizing some of
them and the self-doubts they engender. [1988:510]
In the case of low status youth in resource-poor schools, while Phillipe
Bourgois (1996) cautions against glamorizing adolescents as protopolitical resistors,
children do develop, as Robert Coles (1986) suggests, political consciousness at a
very early age and are cognizant of their own and their families' status in their
immediate social world. Resistance to schooling and other institutional contexts
(Fordham and Ogbu 1986; MacLeod 1995; Willis 1981), as well as self-doubts about
both their ability and the utility of doing schoolwork, represent key aspects of the
interactive dynamic by which low status youth resist or play out their low status.
Youth defined in terms of birth-ascribed status, even when in the best intentions
described as "at-risk" or "underserved,"
are perceived by those outside their groups almost wholly in terms of
their group identity rather than as individuals. They are regarded as
sharing the characteristics which are conventionally attributed to the
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group and they share the obligations, responsibilities, privileges, and
disabilities of their group. [Berreman 1988:503]
Low status youth are seen as all the same, and they themselves recognize this
fact. Their performance in school is a pragmatic reading of their audience, their
teachers and fellow students. What educators' read as their unresponsiveness, or their
inability or unwillingness to learn, more likely represents an attempt at managing an
impression of themselves among uncertain-or all too certain-others. As an
instance of social interaction, they are attempting "to keep the back region out of the
range of the audience's perception; to control the performance, in so far as possible,
preferably to an extent unrealized by the audience" (Berreman 1962:1 1).
III.
What is surprising to some is that children and youth who have never been to
school or who have failed miserably in school are able, if given access to informal
learning opportunities using computers outside of school, to master computer tools
and techniques quickly and become knowledgeable in content areas beyond their
supposed grade levels. Clearly, another interactive dynamic is in play. At Projeto
Clicar in Sao Paulo, Brazil, children and youth from ages 6-18 come in off the street
to engage in a variety of informal learning activities.
At home or in the streets, wherever they may spend most of their
time, these youth live with violence and poverty. For these children
(youth), like many others, the computer is an instrument (object) that
exerts fascination and enchantment while at the same time providing
enjoyment. The pleasure of discovery is independent of economic
status or social class, the only difference is access. Projeto Clicar was
developed to provide this access to youth, between 6 and 18 years of
age, in this 'street situation'.... The attendance is spontaneous and the
activities [at Projeto Clicar] are directed to agree with the interests
and objectives of each youth. Through play, learning opportunities
are created and notions of respect, self-esteem and companionship are
developed. [Revista Clicar 1999:312
The program is located within Estaqao Cie^ncia (the "Science Station"), an old
railway station converted into a science museum and sponsored by the Universidade
de Sdo Paulo. There, on any given day, one can see hundreds of school children in
groups observing exhibits and taking part in activities demonstrating scientific
principles and phenomena. Soon after the museum opened, museum workers noticed
that in addition to the chaperoned school children, usually neatly dressed and
sometimes in school uniforms, other children, wearing dirty, torn clothing, and
wandering about the museum without supervision were looking at the exhibits and
trying out the computers. It became immediately evident that these were children
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living, working and begging in the streets of Sao Paulo and who are excluded from
school and from systems of social assistance and medical care.
Very early, a decision was made not to exclude these youth. "We called a
meeting of these street children," one museum worker told us, "and asked them what
they liked. 'We like the computers!' they said." A portion of the museum was set
aside specifically and solely for their use. The museum, working with the University
and various funders, acquired a few computers, educational software, books, board
games, and art supplies. Several educators highly experienced working with meninos
em situaVao de rua (rough translation: children living in a street situation) began to
work with the children and soon, Projeto Clicar was in full swing, six afternoons a
week from one to five. The children arrive in a steady stream precisely when the
program opens every day. They enter with set hardened faces, the mask of the street,
but soon begin joking with each other and the Projeto Clicar staff, who present adult
faces to the children that break their usual expectations of older people as threatening
exploitation, abuse, or violence, or on the other hand, fear. Their faces relax as they
interact with each other and the staff in a place that is safe for them, where they do not
need to keep up their guard.
Our own work with the staff and children of Projeto Clicar began as a result
of similar work we were part of in after-school sites in California. After learning
about Clicar, we began communicating by e-mail with the educators in Brazil and
soon they invited us to visit. This initial invitation led to collaborative research on the
problems and strategies appropriate to this difficult work with children and
adolescents who live in a constant state of social and personal danger. The youth
themselves are in fact collaborators not only by participating in small-group activities,
but also by helping to frame the activities and carry out research to improve the
activities for the participants. In many cases, they become experts in using the
technology available at Projeto Clicar and working out with the staff and each other
how to use the technology to discover and learn what they want or need to know about
the world and their place in it.
Among the first children to come to Projeto Clicar was Luis Eduardo.3 In his
words, "the majority of the people that come and interview me want to know how it
was when I lived on the street and that is something that I want to forget." About
Clicar, he comments,
Here a kid can be distracted and forget that drugs and violence exist,
not only with the computer but also with pencil and paper.... Clicar
is very good for children that don't have much vision about the future
because here they learn many things that they don't get to at home or
in the streets. [RC 1999: 34]
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Luis Eduardo rapidly became a master at using the computers and at teaching their use
to others. Although at times he would disappear for days or weeks at a time, he
always returned to work and play on the computers. His mastery keeps the scientists
who work at Estac,o Ciencia in awe. He speaks knowledgeably in many areas, but a
year ago, when he returned to school, he found it extremely difficult to succeed. The
problematic character of his returns to school suggest that while he is able to continue
to develop mastery in learning activities in the informal setting that Projeto Clicar
provides, the discipline of the institutional structure of formal schooling still presents
a formidable challenge. After several years of coming to the program, he took on the
role of educator at Projeto Clicar at age 17. Now at the age of 18, he says, "I still feel
a part of this project. I am there with the kids and I intend to stay even more
connected, to have more responsibility. This is one of the things that I noticed and
resolved to do."
Luis Eduardo's comments carry implications both about the children who
come to the site and the pedagogical strategies used there. Many of the children have
either never gone to school or stopped going after two or three years. Some arrive not
knowing how to read or write. Importantly, although identified as "street children,"
some do have homes where they can go at night. Some live with a single parent or
extended family member, or with older youth. As some researchers have pointed out
(e.g., Craidy 1998; Hecht 1998; Lalor 1999; Scheper-Hughes and Hoffman 1998;
UNICEF 1984), the conventional concept of "street children" encompasses a wide
range of individual circumstances and experiences. Nonetheless, it is a concept by
which many children are identified, cast into roles they cannot always escape.
Tiago, now 15, has lived on his own since he was about five, for a long time
sleeping in the cemetery because, he said, "it's the safest place." Tiago discovered
dinosaurs at Projeto Clicar. First in a computer game and later on a web site, he first
caught a glimpse of a Tyrannosaurus and became fascinated. The staff at Clicar
bought some dinosaur books, and soon, Tiago, asked for clay. He wanted to make one
with his own hands. It quickly became evident that Tiago is an artist.
The way in which he worked illustrates the informal character of learning at
Projeto Clicar. Looking at the side view of a Triceratops on the computer screen, at a
frontal view in a book, Tiago worked quickly with his hands and fashioned an
accurate reproduction of the dinosaur in a matter of minutes. He also drew pictures
and murals-sometimes large enough to cover the wall of a large room-of dinosaurs
with pencil and charcoal. In one drawing he showed us, a Tyrannosaurus was stalking
the streets of a city. We asked him if it was Godzilla. "No," he said, "It's a
Tyrannosaurus." Then he laughed, "It's me, taking over Sao Paulo." When we last
left Sao Paulo, Tiago had a job helping to construct dioramas for the science museum.
But his story is not a success story. At age 15, his face has the mask of a hardened
adult; it rarely cracks into a smile nor does it have many reasons too. Yet what he has
received, or rather achieved, at Projeto Clicar combined knowledge, skill, a network
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of people who will listen to him, and a flicker of hope in the face of overwhelming
obstacles.
The continuity of the work at Projeto Clicar is important to the youth who go
there, even sporadically. In the words of one of the educators who works at Projeto
Clicar:
The other day a boy came and was surprised that we were still here
after three years.... He was hesitant to enter and was certain that I
wouldn't remember him. His reaction was one of surprise when I
didn't only remember him, but also called him by his name.... He
was surprised to see that the place he [once] frequented was still there
and with everything he had left to be kept and saved, that this place
had a memory.... The young boy said: "I don't know when I'm going
to come back because my life is uncertain." But on the next day, he
was there. [Revista Clicar 1999:6]
III.
The work at Clicar is not about the technology itself. The computers are,
without a doubt, a magnet for the children who come to Clicar. However, the
educators' descriptions of their work with the children indicates the inevitable and
necessary mingling of pedagogy and impression management.
It was the first time that Eduardo, 9, came to Estasao Ciencia and Projeto
Clicar. He came with a friend, Juliano. The educator, Cecilia Toloza, asked if it was
the first time and he responded: "Yes it is. I always wanted to come but they never
brought me." She asked why his friends never brought him. "Because they say that I
am small and I am work for them." All of the friends are of the same age, between 8
and 10-years-old. She asked his name, his age, where he lived and how he arrived at
Estaqao Ciencia. He said that he came by bus and he did not know the name of the
place where he lived, he called Juliano over in order to help explain where his house
was. She asked about school, and he said that he never went to school and never
studied because they did not have space for him, and his mother didn't have time to go
everyday to the school to see if they had an opening for him to be able to study. We
went to make his Projeto Clicar name tag, and he said, "Auntie, I don't know how to
make (write) my name." Cecilia told him that it was fine and that he was going to
learn to write his name. She wrote his name a piece of paper and asked him to copy
the letters on his name tag.
She noticed that he identified vowels but that he didn't know the consonants.
While he copied the letter, he moved the pencil from hand to hand, now writing with
the right hand, now writing with the left. With both hands, the control of the pencil
and the manner of writing was the same, there was no difference whatsoever. He
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began to draw a picture on the name tag (the educators at Projeto Clicar ask all of the
kids to mark their name tags with a design or something similar, as if it were their
identifying mark or signature at Clicar). While Eduardo drew and painted, always
alternating the pencil from one hand to the other, he was talking and telling everything
that he had done at the museum since he arrived. He said that he and his friends had
arrived early and had begun to make a big mess, running around throughout the
museum. Then the guard "fought with us and said that it was time for us to go and
take a walk and come back later." Finishing the picture, Eduardo showed Cecilia the
name tag, put it on his shirt and with a big smile on his face, he looked at her and said:
"I want to come here all the time!"
The name tags are an example of a key transitional marker in the daily
impression management practices that take place at Projeto Clicar. Every day, when
the children arrive at Estac,o Ciencia, they are expected to wash their hands before
entering the space set aside for them at Projeto Clicar. For the educators at Clicar, the
washing of the hands is both a functional and a symbolic gesture: it is an important
way to maintain the quality of the equipment (not only the computers, but also the
software, the books, and art supplies) available at Projeto Clicar, and at the same time,
is a dramatic indicator, symbolizing to the youth that they are entering a space that is
distinct from the public spaces they frequent on the streets.
After washing their hands, the children enter the space at Clicar. At the
entrance is a table with boxes containing all the identity tags of youth who have ever
attended Clicar. Before moving on to any activity, the children talk with an educator
who oversees the boxes. Together with the educator, they search for their name tags,
which are in alphabetical order in the boxes. Interestingly, some children have created
more than one name tag for themselves, including tags with different names and
different signature images on them. In this way, the children negotiate their own self-
identification-in a sense, their own mask for the day.
The educators are keenly aware of this practice. For them, this is a time to
note exactly who among the many children who frequent Projeto Clicar has come for
the day, and to get a reading of what "mask" or "self' the children have chosen to
project on that particular day. This is also a time when children decide whether or not
they want to remain and interact with the educators and with specific other children
who happen to show up. It is significant that the educators do not attempt to limit the
children to one name tag. They also do not try to limit who can enter and who cannot
(with the exception that ordinary school children, not em situaCao de rua, are not
allowed in the Projeto Clicar space), unless their behavior becomes belligerent or
destructive, abandoning respect for the open informal learning environment that exists
for everyone equally. In short, the children's choice of name tags mark their passage
into a bracketed time and place, where, in the paraphernalia of identity as well as in
the activities themselves, they have power, and are acknowledged to have power in
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their place and interactions in a social world-a moral order that they themselves help
to define.
The activities at Projeto Clicar are designed to help the youth comprehend the
larger world around them and to give them a measure of knowledge and power over
certain aspects of their own lives. Approximately twenty computers are available to
the youth at any one time. They are arranged in an "s" curve, the computer screens
facing outward, so that the children at the computers (at times only one per computer
but often two or three engaged at the same time at a single terminal) are facing toward
each other, thus intensifying interaction among them. The children either use
educational software, picking up math, reading, or other skills as they engage in
playful activities, or they explore the internet. Several of the youth have learned to
navigate the web, searching for music, popular cinema and music artists, both
Brazilian and North American. More recently they have been engaging in e-mail
communications, exchanging questions and answers with university professors,
students, journalists, and other youth in Brazil and the United States. Since many of
the youth at Projeto Clicar either have never been to school or have left school at early
ages, they have learned to count, read, and write through these various activities.
Importantly, they have learned not through controlled exercises imposed on them by
the educators. In many cases, they have learned from each other, working in small
groups or puzzling individually over the sounds and lyrics of popular music on the
screen.
Because of increasing demand, there is now often a wait for the children to
get access to the computers. For this reason, Projeto Clicar offers a wide range of
other kinds of activities for youth attending on any particular day. Some children, for
instance, are not initially drawn to the computers or to learning activities with other
youth. Alan spends most of his time on his own, sitting on a bench in the corner and
reading comic books and children's books and stories. He reads and rereads them
again and again, usually without interacting with anyone. At times the educators ask
him if he wants to use the computer or to draw or color, but he usually refuses and is
content to look at pictures and read. The educators allow him to remain on his own,
although they occasionally sit down with him and read out loud to him for a while.
One day Alan, to everyone's surprise, emptied out the crate of comic and
children's books onto the floor and began rearranging them in order. In this way, his
silent actions channeled his care and fascination for the materials into a sense of
ownership of them and responsibility for them. In short, in the context of Projeto
Clicar he had, while closely guarding the back regions of his life outside the project,
experienced and conveyed a sense of control over immediately present objects and
interests, in marked contrast to the everyday challenges he encounters, begging on the
streets.
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The educators at Clicar use various activities as a way to engage the children
in examining their own lives and their place in the world. In this sense, their work is a
direct descendant from the work of Freinet, Vygotsky, and Freire. One of the main
activities used is art-including clay modeling, kite making, drawing and coloring,
using crayons, markers, colored pencils, charcoal, and paints. How these materials are
used reveals a kind of mutual impression management on the part of both educators
and children. Educators use the children's artistic expression to bring out back stage
information, and the children themselves use it strategically to negotiate what back
stage information they want to bring to the foreground, without compromising their
own sense of identity. One of Clicar's educators, Dirce Pranzetti, described an
example of how this politics of identity takes place.
One afternoon at Projeto Clicar, she was sitting at one of the tables, where
five children, ages ten to thirteen years, were drawing. Outside, the day was dark and
rainy, after a long night of hard rain. Even though it was still raining, many children
came to Clicar that day. All five of the children at the same table were drawing
landscapes with lots of mountains and a few houses, each drawing with a beautiful
yellow sun shining between the mountains. Dirce was distributing the colored
pencils. She began to talk with the children about their drawings. She commented on
how everyone was drawing the sun and asked if any of them had been caught in the
rain that morning. All of them responded that they "had taken a lot of rain" and
continued, immersed in their drawings. Only one of them, Elvis, stopped drawing and
picked up a blank piece of paper from the middle of the table. He asked, "Do you
want to see what happened to me this morning?" He began to draw a map, with
streets and different blocks, and explained, "Here's the bus stop" (which he noted with
a "x"). He continued, "My mother walked with me with an umbrella to there"
(indicating the bus stop). "After that, I got soaked."
Dirce asked, "Why didn't you take the bus to school?"
Elvis answered, "I went, but something happened. After I got off the
bus [he pointed to a place rather far from the school site], I had to
walk two more blocks."
Dirce asked, "In the rain?"
He responded, "No, it had already stopped. It was just a little drizzle,
but when I reached the curve on the corner of the street where the
school is, there was a lake with a lot of water. Really a lot of water.
Then my friend and I decided to go around the building and enter
through the other door."
"Friend?" Dirce asked. "Was he on the bus with you?"
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"Yes. So then we went around the whole school and guess what-the
Director (Principal of the school), that idiot, had not opened the door
on the other side. So went back the whole way." As he spoke, he
drew the way they went on the map. "And we went into the water."
"How high was the water?" asked Dirce.
"Up to here [indicating the height of his knees] but you won't believe
what happened."
"There's more?"
"There's more. They didn't have school. Because of the rain, the
Director had sent everybody home. Isn't she a complete idiot?" and
he wadded up the paper and threw it on the table.
During this time, most of the other children sitting at the table had continued drawing,
as if uninterested in the conversation. They seemed to be more focused on who got to
use the yellow pencil, the color which appears most used by the children and therefore
always in short supply, This example, in any case, suggests how educators use the
activity to explore the daily challenges that the children face. The children in turn use
the opportunity to portray themselves and to fill out or narrow down the dimensions of
their masks.
IV.
When the children leave Clicar at closing time, it is interesting and heart-
breaking to watch them as they re-mask themselves for the street. But while they are
inside Projeto Clicar, it is equally interesting to observe and participate in the face
work that continually goes on. This is not on our part or that of the educators just a
matter of assuming a role in order to establish rapport. It is the basis on which the
activities take place. The children enter the setting with hard-earned suppositions
about what to expect from adults in any institutional setting. They also arrive with
enormous uncertainties, even about the immediate future.
The interactive play with computer and internet technologies, enabling them
to engage with each other, the Clicar staff, and us ethnographers, provides them with
instances of role reversals where in many cases they become the knowledgeable and
the skilled and we become the learners; where they become certain about how things
work and what they know and we become the uncertain ones. It is not a game,
although it often looks like one. It is not a put-on either. They really do know much
about which we are ignorant. They really do survive in situations where we would
collapse in confusion and exhaustion. In brief, it is a situation where the stratigraphy
of domination is suspended, and where all of us involved can judge each other's
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motives and define ourselves and the situation without regard to the usual invidious
distinctions that determine exclusion and inclusion. In a very real sense, we are all
together learning from each other how learning takes place.
Some critics have argued that such programs are simply recreational. We
would suggest that they do, in fact, involve recreation. The activities at Projeto Clicar
represent, for the children who come there, the recreation of hope. In this regard, the
work of the educators at Clicar is akin, and in fact largely based, on the work of Paolo
Freire, who has argued that education for children and adults from oppressed and
excluded populations must build on their world and reveal their world and their place
in it (Freire 1970; 1994). It is, as he wrote late in his life, a pedagogy of hope.
As Freire (1994:8) has commented, hope is not simply a nice feeling to have.
It is an ontological need, a pragmatic stance toward the world, one's position in the
world, and one's agency to accomplish changes in that world. As such, he writes, any
productive pedagogy is transformative, posing a problem, encouraging participation
and agency in the world at large. In this sense, "the educational practice of a
progressive option will never be anything but an adventure in unveiling. It will
always be an experiment in bringing out the truth." (Freire 1994:7). Berreman's work
on social stratification and impression management are examples of this adventure in
unveiling, opening up the rugged terrain of society and setting a path for passage
through that terrain. As Berreman suggests, "A thread of hope lies in the possibility
that people can learn from comparison of the realities of inherited inequality across
space, time, and culture" (1988:516). Anthropologists have a role to play in this
pedagogy of hope-both in unmasking the processes that lead to exclusion and
inclusion and in helping to recreate reasons for hope, a dual task for which Gerald
Berreman has given us the conceptual technology.
Works Cited
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1 A draft of this paper was presented at the Behind Many Masks Conference in Honor of
Gerald Berreman sponsored by the Kroeber Anthropological Society and Department of
Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, April 2001.
2All quotes from Portuguese texts, notes, and interviews were translated by the authors.
3Names of the youth described ethnographically have not been changed. After discussing
relevant ethical and methodological issues with each other and with some of the youth
involved in the program, the authors felt that an attempt at any form of preserving anonymity
through changing participants' names would diminish the contributions they have made to the
collaborative nature of the program and undermine their sense of ownership of their own
experiences. Importantly, several of the youth have themselves read and commented on parts
of this article.
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145