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PauIo Freire: diaIogue, praxis and education
PauIo Freire, diaIogue, praxis and education. Perhaps the most inf IuentiaI
thinker about education in the Iate twentieth century, PauIo Freire has been
particuIarIy popuIar with inf ormaI educators with his emphasis on diaIogue and
his concern f or the oppressed.
contents: introduction contribution critique f urther reading and ref erences links
PauIo Freire (1921 1997), the Brazilian educationalist, has lef t a signif icant mark on thinking about
progressive practice. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed is currently one of the most quoted educational texts
(especially in Latin America, Af rica and Asia). Freire was able to draw upon, and weave together, a number of
strands of thinking about educational practice and liberation. Sometimes some rather excessive claims are
made f or his work e.g. 'the most signif icant educational thinker of the twentieth century'. He wasn't John
Dewey would probably take that honour but Freire certainly made a number of important theoretical
innovations that have had a considerable impact on the development of educational practice and on
inf ormal education and popular education in particular. n this piece we assess these and brief ly examine
some of the critiques that can be made of his work.
Cont ribut ion
Five aspects of Paulo Freire's work have a particular signif icance f or our purposes here. First, his emphasis
on dialogue has struck a very strong chord with those concerned with popular and inf ormal education.
Given that inf ormal education is a dialogical (or conversational) rather than a curricula f orm this is hardly
surprising. However, Paulo Freire was able to take the discussion on several steps with his insistence that
dialogue involves respect. t should not involve one person acting on another, but rather people working
with each other. Too much education, Paulo Freire argues, involves 'banking' the educator making
'deposits' in the educatee.
Second, Paulo Freire was concerned with praxis action that is inf ormed (and linked to certain values).
Dialogue wasn't just about deepening understanding but was part of making a dif f erence 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 f or justice and
human f lourishing. nf ormal and popular educators have had a long-standing orientation to action so the
emphasis on change in the world was welcome. But there was a sting in the tail. Paulo Freire argued f or
inf ormed action and as such provided a usef ul counter-balance to those who want to diminish theory.
Third, Freire's attention to naming the world has been of great signif icance to those educators who have
traditionally worked with those who do not have a voice, and who are oppressed. The idea of building a
'pedagogy of the oppressed' or a 'pedagogy of hope' and how this may be carried f orward has f ormed a
signif icant impetus to work. An important element of this was his concern with conscientization
developing consciousness, but consciousness that is understood to have the power to transf orm reality'
(Taylor 1993: 52).
Fourth, Paulo Freire's insistence on situating educational activity in the lived experience of participants has
opened up a series of possibilities f or the way inf ormal educators can approach practice. His concern to
look f or words that have the possibility of generating new ways of naming and acting in the world when
working with people around literacies is a good example of this.
Fif th, a number of inf ormal educators have connected with Paulo Freire's use of metaphors drawn f rom
Christian sources. An example of this is the way in which the divide between teachers and learners can be
transcended. n part this is to occur as learners develop their consciousness, but mainly it comes through
the 'class suicide' or 'Easter experience' of the teacher.
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. Quoted by Paul Taylor (1993: 53)
Crit ique
nevitably, there are various points of criticism. First, many are put of f by Paulo Freire's language and his
appeal to mystical concerns. The f ormer was a concern of Freire himself in later lif e and his work af ter
Pedagogy of the Oppressed was usually written within a more conversational or accessible f ramework.
Second, Paulo Freire tends to argue in an either/or way. We are either with the oppressed or against them.
This may be an interesting starting point f or teaching, but taken too literally it can make f or rather simplistic
(political) analysis.
Third, there is an tendency in Freire to overturn everyday situations so that they become pedagogical.
Paulo Freire's approach was largely constructed around structured educational situations. While his initial
point of ref erence might be non-f ormal, the educational encounters he explores remain f ormal (Torres
1993: 127) n other words, his approach is still curriculum-based and entail transf orming settings into a
particular type of pedagogical space. This can rather work against the notion of dialogue (in that curriculum
implies a predef ined set of concerns and activities). Educators need to look f or 'teachable moments' but
when we concentrate on this we can easily overlook simple power of being in conversation with others.
Fourth, what is claimed as liberatory practice may, on close inspection, be rather closer to banking than we
would wish. n other words, the practice of Freirian education can involve smuggling in all sorts of ideas and
values under the guise of problem-posing. Taylor's analysis of Freire's literacy programme shows that:
.. the rhetoric which announced the importance of dialogue, engagement, and equality, and
denounced silence, massification and oppression, did not match in practice the subliminal
messages and modes of a Banking System of education. Albeit benign, Freire's approach differs
only in degree, but not in kind, from the system which he so eloquently criticizes. (Taylor 1993:
148)
Educators have to teach. They have to transf orm transf ers of inf ormation into a 'real act of knowing' (op
cit: 43).
Fif th, there are problems regarding Freire's model of literacy. While it may be taken as a challenge to the
political projects of northern states, his analysis remains rooted in assumptions about cognitive
development and the relation of literacy to rationality that are suspect (Street 1983: 14). His work has not
'entirely shrugged of f the assumptions of the "autonomous model' (ibid.: 14).
Last, there are questions concerning the originality of Freire's contribution. As Taylor has put it to say
that as many commentators do that Freire's thinking is 'eclectic', is 'to underestimate the degree to which
he borrowed directly f rom other sources' (Taylor 1993: 34). Taylor (1993: 34-51) brings out a number of
these inf luences and 'absorbtions' perhaps most interestingly the extent to which the structure of
Pedagogy of the Oppressed parallels Kosik's Dialectic of the Concrete (published in Spanish in the mid
1960s). Here we would simply invite you to compare Freire's interests with those of Martin Buber. His
concern with conversation, encounter, being and ethical education have strong echoes in Freirian thought.
Furt her reading and ref erences
Key texts: Paulo Freire's central work remains:
Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth: Penguin. mportant exploration of dialogue
and the possibilities f or liberatory practice. Freire provides a rationale f or a pedagogy of the oppressed;
introduces the highly inf luential notion of banking education; highlights the contrasts between education
f orms that treat people as objects rather than subjects; and explores education as cultural action. See,
also:
Freire, P. (1995) Pedagogy of Hope. Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum. This book
began as a new pref ace to his classic work, but grew into a book. t's importance lies in Freire's ref lection
on the text and how it was received, and on the development of policy and practice subsequently. Written in
a direct and engaging way.
BiographicaI materiaI: There are two usef ul English language starting points:
Freire, P. (1996) Letters to Cristina. Reflections on my life and work, London: Routledge. Retrospective on
Freire's work and lif e. in the f orm of letters to his niece. He looks back at his childhood experiences, to his
youth, and his lif e as an educator and policymaker.
Gadotti, M. (1994) Reading Paulo Freire. His life and work, New York: SUNY Press. Clear presentation of
Freire's thinking set in historical context written by a close collaborator.
For my money the best critical exploration of his work is:
Taylor, P. (1993) The Texts of Paulo Freire, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Other references
Kosik, K. (1988) La dialectique du concret, Paris: Plon.
Street, B. V. (1984) Literacy in Theory and Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Torres, C. A. (1993) 'From the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed to "A Luta Continua: the political pedagogy of
Paulo Freire' in P. McLaren and P. Leonard (eds.) Freire: A critical encounter , London: Routledge.
Links
Lesley Bentley Paulo Freire. Brief biography plus lots of usef ul links.
Catedra Paulo Freire (Pontif icia Universidad Catolica de Sao Paulo) click f or English version.
Blanca Facundo's critique of Freire's ideas, and reactions to Facundo's critique interesting collection of
pieces.
Paulo Freire nstitute a wide range of material available about current work in the Freirian tradition. Click
f or the English version.
DanieI Schugurensky on Freire - consists of a collection of reviews of his books and links to other
pages.
Q&A: The Freirian Approach to Adult Literacy Education, David Spener's review f or ERC.
AcknowIedgement: The image of Paulo Freire is by chhhh/f lickr.com. t is reproduced under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence.
[http://www.f lickr.com/photos/chhhh/2973802038/]
How to cite this articIe: Smith, M. K. (1997, 2002) 'Paulo Freire and inf ormal education', the encyclopaedia
of informal education. [http://inf ed.org/mobi/paulo-f reire-dialogue-praxis-and-education/. Retrieved: insert
date]
Mark K. Smith 1997, 2002
Tagged with concientization dialogue education Paulo Freire pedagogy praxis social action