To my knowledge, no progressive educator has ever suggested that children didn't need to know the "mere facts" about the contributions of African Americans to our society.
Sol SternPedagogy of the Oppressed resonated with progressive educators, already committed to a 'child-centered' rather than a 'teacher-directed' approach to classroom instruction. Freire's rejection of teaching content knowledge seemed to buttress what was already the ed schools' most popular theory of learning, which argued that students should work collaboratively in constructing their own knowledge and that the teacher should be a 'guide on the side,' not a 'sage on the stage.'
Sol Stern