Essential to developing these attributes or qualities is the process of identifying and enhancing particular values and virtues in teachers. Freire finds the following values and virtues to be significant: openness, humility, tolerance, courage, patience and impatience, decisiveness, respect, care and love, as well as the joy of living. Openness as a value allows teachers to use every opportunity to discuss any given topic that proves to be of significance. This openness, however, exposes those areas or topics that the teacher does not know about. With this realisation should come a sense of security to speak about that which one does not know and open oneself to learn what one does not know, as well as one’s state of unfinishedness. Openness towards life and its challenges is an essential education practice. Openness towards others means respectfully and critically reflecting upon this openness and letting it form part of teaching. It therefore is, impossible to know
ourselves as unfinished and not to open ourselves to the world and to others (Freire, 1998: 120-121). Humility helps teachers understand that: “[no] one knows it all; no one is ignorant of everything. We all know something; we all are ignorant of something”
(Freire: 2005b: 72). It is humility that helps us listen with respect and overcome
prejudice. Humility should lead us away from arrogance. “Humility does not flourish in people’s insecurities but in the insecurity of the more aware, and thus this insecure security is one of the expressions of humility, as is uncertain certainty, unlike certainty, which is excessively sure of itself” (Freire, 2005b: 75). It is in the process of reaching the unknown knowledge that humility helps to recognise and reveal the ignorance in order to reach knowledge (Freire, 1998: 64-66). It is also humility that asks of us not to overvalue our identity, which could turn into arrogance, and value the identity of the other.
Humility is based in equality and not superiority. At the same time, it is therefore necessary to remember that humility does not demand subjecting oneself to others, especially to those who do not respect one (Freire, 1998: 107-108). Related to humility, the virtue of tolerance is important for teachers. Freire believes that without tolerance – not irresponsible make-believe ̶ serious pedagogical work is impossible; no authentic democratic experience is viable; all progressive practice denies itself. Tolerance teaches us to live with, learn from and respect the different. The learning of tolerance does not happen mechanically, but through testimony (Freire, 1997: 50). As a virtue, tolerance requires limits in which principles, discipline and ethics are respected (Freire, 2005: 76- 78). Tolerance should never be resigning oneself to accepting that things cannot change, be that respect for education, teachers or learners (Freire, 1998: 79).
Another virtue important for the teacher is courage. Freire speaks of “daring” as a
synonym for courage – the opposite of which is fear. Fear is something normal. One does not need to hide one’s fears nor, at the same time, be immobilised by them. Freire
believes that one needs to control one’s fear and “educate” it. From this, courage is born. Courage is something found within the self.
That is why there may be fear without courage, the fear that devastates and paralyzes us, there may never be courage without fear that which “speaks” of our humanness as we manage to limit, subject, and control it (Freire, 2005b: 76).
A teacher also needs to be able to make decisions regarding his or her educational work. Making decisions proves to be difficult sometimes because it requires exercising freedom of choice. Decisiveness as a virtue calls for careful evaluation in comparing and choosing a position, side or person. Decision-making cannot always happen without rupture. Decisiveness also means to be able to operate within a democratic situation in which teachers participate in the process of decision-making.
There are plenty of occasions when a good democracy-oriented pedagogical example is to make the decision in question with the students, after analyzing the problem. Other times, when the decision to be made is within the scope of the educator’s expertise, there is no reason not to take action, to be negligent (Freire, 2005b: 79).
Decision-making is an important educational act, precisely because education is a specifically human act of intervening in the world and has a directive vocation. It is because education is not neutral that decisiveness is an important virtue for teachers to develop. Respect is needed to guide decisiveness.
Mutual respect among teachers, students, parents and authorities – all those involved in education – is important. For the teacher in particular it is important to have respect for what is different. Respecting what is different and respecting others is crucial but so too is respecting oneself and one’s profession. The virtue of living with the tension between patience and impatience is another fundamental quality of the progressive teacher. What is called for is a balance between patience and impatience. Unaccompanied patience could lead to immobility, inactivity and a position of resignation and permissiveness. Conversely, impatience alone may lead to blind activism and deny respect for the “necessary relationship between tactics and strategy” (Freire, 2005b: 80).
Hand in hand with a good balance of patience and impatience goes another quality which Freire calls verbal parsimony. It is about rarely losing control over one’s words, i.e. one who rarely exceeds the limits of considered yet robust discourse (Freire, 2005: 80-81). Caring for and loving our students and the educative experience should not be seen as something separate from serious teaching. “Affectivity is not necessarily an enemy of
knowledge or of the process of knowing,” (Freire, 1998: 125). Lovingness is also a quality that is necessary for teaching, otherwise the work would lose its meaning, i.e. lovingness towards the students as well as the teaching process. One must love teaching in order to withstand all the adverse conditions of the learners and the governmental and social contempt for education. This love Freire calls “armed love”, meaning the fighting love to denounce and announce (Freire, 2005b: 74). A further virtue for democratic educational practice identified by Freire (2005b: 83) is joy of living. Teachers can free themselves to surrender to the joy of living without hiding reasons for sadness. It is necessary to champion joy in a school.
Whether or not we are willing to overcome slips or inconsistencies, by living humility, lovingness, courage, tolerance, competence, decisiveness, patience- impatience, and verbal-parsimony, we contribute to creating a happy, joyful school. We forge a school-adventure, a school that marches on, that is not afraid of the risks, and that rejects immobility. It is a school that thinks, that participates, that creates, that speaks, that loves, that guesses, that passionately embraces and says yes to life. It is not a school that quiets down and quits (Freire, 2005b: 83). A teacher must never cease to try to create a pedagogical space in which joy has a privileged role. Freire (1998: 69) also identifies a relationship between joy and hope. Hope is something shared between teachers and students, and not with an intruder. Being aware of your unfinishedness is the ability to hope. It is in hoping that joy can flourish. Freire believes that the more methodologically rigorous teaching and questioning becomes the more joyous and hopeful the teacher becomes (Freire, 1998: 125). In
conjunction with all these and other values and virtues, teachers also need to navigate the world of knowledge and skills regarding teaching and learning.