Paulo Freire
Education should not pour facts into passive students but help the oppressed, through dialogue, to understand and change their world.
Placement
Brazilian educator: against “banking” education, the oppressed learn in dialogue to read the word and the world – conscientização as the path to liberation.
Key ideas
- Pedagogy of the oppressed
- Critique of banking education
- Conscientization
Influence
Influenced by 8
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
influenced by
Freire drew on Hegel’s master–slave dialectic to argue that only the oppressed, by freeing themselves, can also free their oppressors (Pedagogia do oprimido, written 1968). P. Freire, Pedagogia do oprimido (written 1968); G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Karl Marx
influenced by
Freire took from Marx praxis as the unity of reflection and action and cited his thesis that the educator must be educated (Pedagogia do oprimido, written 1968). P. Freire, Pedagogia do oprimido (written 1968); K. Marx, Thesen über Feuerbach (1845)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Georg Lukács
influenced by
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (ch. 1) Freire took up Lukács’s demand, in his book on Lenin (1924), that the party “explain to the masses their own action” – but as dialogue with the people rather than explanation to them. P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968; English 1970), ch. 1; G. Lukács, Lenin (1924)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Lukács › 1885–1971
Karl Mannheim
influenced by
In Education as the Practice of Freedom (1967) Freire repeatedly cited Mannheim and took up his “fundamental democratisation” of mass society; Vanilda Paiva argued that Mannheim’s sociology of education was a pillar of Freire’s early pedagogy. P. Freire, Educação como prática da liberdade (1967); K. Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1940); V. Paiva, Paulo Freire e o nacionalismo-desenvolvimentista (1980)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Mannheim › 1893–1947
Jean-Paul Sartre
influenced by
Against “banking” education Freire cited Sartre’s formula from his essay on Husserl’s intentionality – consciousness and the world are “given at one stroke” – in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968, ch. 2). P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968; English 1970), ch. 2; J.-P. Sartre, “Une idée fondamentale de la phénoménologie de Husserl: l’intentionnalité” (1939), Situations I
Evidence: AI draft
Jean-Paul Sartre › 1905–1980
Frantz Fanon
influenced by
Freire drew on Fanon’s account of the colonised who internalise the oppressor and turn violence against their own (Pedagogia do oprimido, written 1968). P. Freire, Pedagogia do oprimido (written 1968; Eng. 1970; Portuguese ed. 1974); F. Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre (1961)
Evidence: AI draft
Frantz Fanon › 1925–1961
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Erich Fromm
influenced by
Freire took Fromm’s distinction of necrophilous and biophilous character to describe oppression as a love of control over the living (Pedagogia do oprimido, written 1968). P. Freire, Pedagogia do oprimido (written 1968); E. Fromm, The Heart of Man (1964)
Evidence: AI draft
Erich Fromm › 1900–1980
Amílcar Cabral
influenced by
Freire built his literacy work in Guinea-Bissau on Cabral’s call for the ‘re-Africanisation of mentalities’ and the ‘class suicide’ of the petty bourgeoisie (Cartas à Guiné-Bissau, 1977). P. Freire, Cartas à Guiné-Bissau: Registros de uma experiência em processo (1977; Eng. Pedagogy in Process, 1978); A. Cabral, Unity and Struggle (1979)
Evidence: AI draft
Amílcar Cabral › 1924–1973
Influenced 2
Steve Biko
influenced
Biko and the South African Students’ Organisation used Freire’s conscientisation in literacy and community projects of the early 1970s to build Black self-reliance. L. Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa (2016); S. Biko, I Write What I Like (1978); P. Freire, Pedagogia do oprimido (1968)
Evidence: AI draft
Steve Biko › 1946–1977
bell hooks
influenced ✓
bell hooks took up Freire’s critique of ‘banking’ education and his idea of conscientisation for an engaged pedagogy, teaching as a practice of freedom (Teaching to Transgress, 1994). b. hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994); P. Freire, Pedagogia do oprimido (1968)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
bell hooks › 1952–2021
Works
Written in Chilean exile: education either domesticates or liberates – learning as dialogue in which teachers and students name and transform their world.
Position
Freire attacked “banking” education, in which teachers deposit knowledge in passive students and so reproduce domination. Education is never neutral: it either domesticates or liberates. In genuine dialogue, teachers and learners work with the “generative words” of their own lives and learn to read not only the word but the world. Through conscientização – critical awareness – the oppressed come to see their situation as changeable and act to change it; here Freire drew on Hegel’s master–slave dialectic, Marx and Fanon. Liberation cannot be handed down by leaders; it must be won together with the oppressed. Freire shaped critical pedagogy and popular education worldwide, as well as liberation theology.
Life & context
Paulo Freire was born in Recife, Brazil, in 1921 and studied law. In adult education he developed a literacy method with which, in 1963 in Angicos, some three hundred workers learned to read in forty-five days. After the military coup of 1964 he was briefly jailed and went into exile in Bolivia, Chile and later Geneva. Returning in 1980, he became education secretary of São Paulo; he died in 1997.
Further main works
- Education as the Practice of Freedom (Educação como prática da liberdade, 1967)
- Pedagogy of Hope (Pedagogia da esperança, 1992)
Appears in
- Journey ‘Thinking Freedom’ · Stop 6 of 9
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