Paulo Freire

Nancy Thao
4/10/12
What does this picture say to you?
Paulo Freire states,
"There is no neutral process of
education. Education either functions
as an instrument which is used to
facilitate integration of the younger
generation into the logic of the
present system and bring about
conformity or it becomes the practice
of freedom, the means by which men
and women deal critically and
creatively with reality and discover
how to participate in the
transformation of their world."

Life
Paulo Freire was born in Recife, Pernambuco,
Brazil on September 19, 1921.

In 1929, due to the
economic problems by the
Great Depression, the Freire
family was forced to leave
Recife, settling in nearby
Jaboatao where Paulo spent
part of his childhood and
adolescence.

Life

Freires economic hardship resulted in his being two years behind
in schooling. Some of his teachers suggested that he might have
had serious long-term developmental problems.
In Jaboatao, he began to be aware of the world around him since
many of his friends lived in extreme poverty. "In Jaboatao, when I
was ten, I began to think that there were a lot of things in the
world that were not going well" (Fundamentos, p. 10).
As his familys decline abated and economic turmoil began to
dissipate, Paulo and his familys economic status improved.
He took his studies seriously: "I spelled rat with two 'rs' until I
was fifteen. At twenty, although I was at Law School, I had
mastered Portuguese grammar and was just beginning my study
of Philosophy and the Sociology of Language(Fundamentos, p.
10).

Life
Life

Freire vehemently maintains that his familiarity with Marxism
never distanced him from Christ: "I never understood how to
reconcile fellowship with Christ with the exploitation of other
human beings, or to reconcile a love for Christ with racial,
gender and class discrimination. By the same token, I could
never reconcile the Left's liberating discourse with the Left's
discriminatory practice along the lines of race, gender, and
class. What a shocking contradiction: to be, at the same time,
a leftist and a racist.
During the 1970s, in an interview in Australia, Freire told some
greatly surprised reporters that it was in the woods of Recife,
refuge of slaves, and the ravines where the oppressed of
Brazil live, coupled with my love for Christ and hope that He
is the light, that led me to Marx. My relationship with Marx
never suggested that I abandon Christ" (Letters to Cristina, 86-
7).

Socio-cultural Context
Recife, which is located in the northeastern part
of Brazil was located in a nation ravaged by great
disparities.
Because Brazil ended the institution of slavery
only in increments, the effect of the slave
economy perpetuated the economic injustice
evidenced by pandemic poverty.
It was in this setting of working with the
illiterate poor in the slums of Recife that Freire
became politicized.
Socio-cultural Context
Freire believed that the process of making an
individual literate was somehow contributing to
the reproduction of poverty.
For Freire, literacy is a quality of consciousness,
not simply mastery of a morally neutral
technique. He believed that there was embedded
in the curriculum being taught to the poor a
message that would ultimately reinforce and
perpetuate their poverty.
Socio-cultural context
Apart from his academic and institutional
life, Freire participated in movements for
popular education in the early 1960s.
The most important of these were the
Movement for Popular Culture (MCP) in
Recife, the Cultural Extension Service (SEC)
and the "Bare feet can also learn to read"
campaign where Freire got his first chance to
try out his method with three hundred
sugarcane sharecroppers.
When that experiment proved successful, he
was invited by President Joao Belchior Goulart
to implement a national literacy campaign.
The program intended to make five million
adults literate and politically progressive
within the first year.
Contributions
Five aspects of Paulo Freires work:
1. Dialogue: Freire was able to take the discussion on several
steps with his insistence that dialogue involves respect. It
should not involve one person acting on another, but rather
people working with each other.
2. Praxis: action that is informed and linked to certain values.
Dialogue wasn't just about deepening understanding but was
part of making a difference in the world. Dialogue in itself is a
co-operative activity involving respect. The process is
important and can be seen as enhancing community and
building social capital and to leading us to act in ways that
make for justice and human flourishing.
3. The idea of building a pedagogy of the oppressed or a
pedagogy of hope: an important element of concern was
conscientization which is developing consciousness, but
consciousness that is understood to have the power to
transform reality.

Contributions
4. Use of metaphors drawn from Christian
sources: the division between teachers and
learners can be transcended.
Ex: The educator for liberation has to die as the
unilateral educator of the educatees, in order to
be born again as the educator-educatee of the
educatees-educators. An educator is a person
who has to live in the deep significance of
Easter.
5. Paulo Freire's insistence on situating
educational activity in the lived experience
of participants: lead to a series of possibilities
for the way informal educators can approach
practice.


Needs of the learner
It was in this process of interaction between
technique, curriculum, and human development that
Freire based his philosophy which intertwined a mix of
pedagogic, economic and social issues.
He linked the task of ending oppression and
perpetuating poverty as part of the process where the
learner is liberated though education. A liberation
which frees the learner to reach their full potential.
What he sought to identify was what he believed to
be the poors loss of a sense of individuality, and with
it a sense of agency.
Freires Impact
He sought to revolutionize not only
the curriculum, but the student-
teacher relationship.
He believed that teachers
approached their students from a
position of power which was
ultimately demeaning.
This position of authority was used
as a medium to condition the
student to the existence of power
relationships.
In Freires model, the teacher was
not just a aloof expert, but more of
a colleague embarking with the
learner on a journey.

Freires Impact

Freires major contribution to the field of peace
education is the insight that education is,
necessarily, a form of politics.
He averred that schooling is never neutral;
instead, it always serves some interests and
impedes others.
Freires magnetism lies in his insistence that
schooling can be used for liberation, just as it has
been used for oppression.
He argued that through liberatory education,
people come to understand social systems of
oppression and equip themselves to act to
change those situations.
How does this relate to Adult
Education?
6 characteristic of the Adult
Learner:
The self-concept of the learner:
adults have a self-concept of being
responsible for their own lives and
their own decisions.
Prior Experience of the learner:
the richest resource for learning
resides in the learner.

Lastly, Freire saw the educator as
someone whose task it was to teach
the learner about more than mere
context.