Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Paulo Frierre
Biography
Born on September 19, 1921 in Recife, Brazil, Freire became familiar with poverty and hunger during the 1929 Great Depression. Freire enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Recife in 1943. Although admitted to the legal bar, he never actually practiced law but instead worked as a teacher in secondary schools teaching Portuguese. In 1946, Freire was appointed Director of the Department of Education and Culture of the Social Service in the State of Pernambuco, the Brazilian state of which Recife is the capital. Working primarily among the illiterate poor, Freire began to embrace a non-orthodox form of what could be considered liberation theology. In 1961, he was appointed director of the Department of Cultural Extension of Recife University, and in 1962 he had the first opportunity for significant application of his theories, when 300 sugarcane workers were taught to read and write in just 45 days. In response to this experiment, the Brazilian government approved the creation of thousands of cultural circles across the country. In 1964, a military coup put an end to that effort, Freire was imprisoned as a traitor for 70 days. After a brief exile in Bolivia. In 1967, Freire published his first book, Education as the Practice of Freedom. He followed this with his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. On the strength of reception of his work, Freire was offered a visiting professorship at Harvard University in 1969. Vastly expanding its reach. Because of the political feud between Freire, a Christian socialist and the successive authoritarian military dictatorships it wasn't published in his own country of Brazil until 1974. After a year in Cambridge , USA, Freire moved to Geneva, Switzerland to work as a special education adviser to the World Council of Churches. During this time Freire acted as an advisor on education reform in former Portuguese colonies in Africa, particularly Guinea Bissau and Mozambique. In 1979, he was able to return to Brazil, and moved back in 1980. Freire joined the Workers' Party (PT) in the city of So Paulo, and acted as a supervisor for its adult literacy project from 1980 to 1986. When the PT prevailed in the municipal elections in 1988, Freire was appointed Secretary of Education for So Paulo. Freire died of heart failure on May 2, 1997.
(Date of publication)
With A. Faundez. Learning to question: a pedagogy of liberation (1985, 1989) With D. Macedo. Literacy: Reading the word and the world (1987) With I. Shor. A pedagogy for liberation: dialogues on transforming education (1987) With I. Shor. Freire for the classroom: a sourcebook for liberatory teaching (1987) With H. Giroux & P. McLaren. Teachers as intellectuals: towards a critical pedagogy of learning (1988) With I. Shor. Cultural wars: School and society in the conservative restoration 1969-1984 (1988) With Moacir Gadotti, Sergio Guimaraes, and Isabel Hernandez. Pedagogia, Dialogo y Conflicto (1988) With H. Giroux & P. McLaren. Teachers as intellectuals: towards a critical pedagogy of learning (1988) With M. Horton et al. We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change (1990) With J. Fraser et al. Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo (1990) With M. Escobar & G.Guevara Niebla. Paulo Freire on higher education: A dialogue at the National University of Mexico (1994) With Donaldo Macedo. Ideology Matters. (1997) With Manuel Castells, Ramon Flecha, Donald Macedo, Henry Giroux and Paul Willis. Introduction by Peter McLaren. Critical Education in the New Information Age (1998)
Pedagogy of Freedom
Described by Stanley Aronowitz as Freires last will and testament. It is a culmination of Freires life work. A text that urges its readers to become, to reach toward still-untapped possibility. The major Themes in Freire's Pedagogy of Freedom: The exercise of teaching ends up teaching the teacher. The teacher is always a learner and vice-versa. History should be lived as possibility, not with any sense of fatalistic inevitability. We must act in history. Teaching requires an interventionist activism which can never be neutral. The present system of economic inequities came to us through the historical process. We must wake up to the fact that we can therefore change it through the possibilities offered to us in same historical process. Mankind will always be unfinished, in the process of becoming. This is related to Freire's selfconception as a progressive (as opposed to "neoliberal") educator, open to change, and having "epistemological curiosity." The philosophy of neoliberals is wrong because it accepts the ideas that large-scale unemployment is inevitable, that economic globalization is inevitable (113) and that there is nothing we can do to change the economic inequities in our world. Freire calls this thinking "the death of history." Teaching is not mere transferring of content, the "banking system," as he calls it. It includes instead developing the students' sense of curiosity, and awakening in them the possibilities of their own ability to construct knowledge and affect history. Desirable teacher traits include curiosity, self-confidence, generosity, humility, and the ability to listen well (which he calls the "discipline of silence" on page 105.) A proper balance of freedom and authority. Freire addresses himself explicitly and directly to teachers. He asks what is involved in education and in becoming a teacher who educates, and reflects on educational practice from a 'progressive' perspective. The book both states a utopian vision and advances a thoroughgoing critique of the ongoing debasement of education, embracing technology as the basis for future progress. With respect to his vision, Freire insists on the importance of maintaining hopefulness and holding on to possible dreams for what education can be. It is considered by many that Pedagogy of Freedom is Freire's most important book since Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
"To learn precedes to teach To teach is part of the very fabric of learning There is no valid teaching from which there does not emerge something learned and through which the learner does not become capable of recreating and remaking what has been thought Teaching that does not emerge from the experience of learning cannot be leaned by anyone." (p. 31)
The concept of critical consciousness means the ability to perceive social, political and economic oppression. The book includes two essays by Freire Education as the practice of freedom which talks about his work with illiterates in brazil, which explains his process of using culture circles and generative words rather than the traditional teacher led learning processes to teach adult literacy. Extension or communication - This essay captures the idea that while all development is modernisation, not all modernisation is development. It concludes that the practice of extension as a tool for education is inconsistent and doesnt allow space to engage in conscientization. As the role of the extension worker is reduced to the act of extending his/her knowledge, this results in a static relationship between the extension worker and peasants, perpetuating further that the learner is an object opposed to an engaged subject capable of critically viewing the world and making decisions.
Letters to Christina
Reflections on My Life and Work. >A book written in the form of letters to his niece Christina. >Through his letters Freire revisits his childhood providing an intimate account of his life and how he grew to become an educator with such commitment in his life and work as a teacher working to liberate the oppressed. He spoke very truly of his experiences growing up there was no efforts to idealize or romanticize his memories-he described them because those were the years that fed his critical thought in adulthood.(p192) He also described his open reminiscing by saying For me to return to my distant childhood is a necessary act of curiosity (p13) >Throughout these letters we are reminded of the importance memory plays and how they enable us to generate change for the future. >The close relationship of the letters to Paulo's life make the points he is arguing more intense. They translate real moments of the objectivity of Brazilian history, a history that he participated in as a subject.(p192) >His letters invite fellow teachers to deepen their convictions for a pedagogy for liberation and to broaden our conceptions of how we address ourselves and those with whom we struggle. His words strengthen and work towards a critical action.
Teachers as Cultural Workers. Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, focuses on Paulo Freire's ideas about culture, education and social change. He also explores the possibilities of interpretation in language, and hidden explicit intentions. Freire claims that the job of a teacher is a joyful and rigorous career, and that they themselves are also learners. Freire proclaimed that he would never feel ashamed of being a teacher. Freire states that teachers must not act as parents to their students. This book is written in the context of the infant democracy in Brazil. However the ideas that Freire presents should be influential on teacher education in other social contexts. Freire's inspirational vision of a democratic teaching force provides teachers with practical strategies and philosophical foundations for pursuing their careers in education. These are points that are still used to inspire in teacher training courses today.
Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach Freire's last book.