Freire, Paulo (1921–1997)

One of the most influential progressive educational thinkers in the 20th century, Paulo Freire, has been especially popular among educators in North America, South America, Europe, and Africa with concerns for social justice. Born in Recife, the capital [Page 592]of Pernambuco Province in northwestern Brazil, Freire was the son of Catholic parents. When Freire was 13, his father died and his family was thrust into a life of poverty. The hunger he endured and the choices his mother had to make to secure food for his family shaped Freire's ethical commitments to the poor and the oppressed at a very early age.

On one occasion, Freire and his brothers stole a chicken from their neighbor and killed it. When his devoutly religious mother discovered what they had done, instead of punishing them or making them return the chicken to their neighbor, she prepared a meal for them with it. This experience, Freire would later recall, brought into relief the restricted choices that people living in poverty had to choose among and that some of them were made on pragmatic grounds, even when such choices violated conventional morality. It also deepened his insight into the condition of and compassion for oppressed people around the world. Freire's mother also played a crucial role in his intellectual development. She taught her youngest of four children to read by writing letters and drawing pictures in the yard, a literacy practice that would be employed later in his instruction with adults.

Freire became a grammar teacher while still in high school and later married Elza Maia Costa de Oliveira, an elementary school teacher, in 1944. The two had five children, three of whom became educators. In 1959 Freire earned his doctorate at the University of Recife and assumed an appointment there in the history and philosophy of education. In 1962 he was appointed national coordinator of adult literacy by the governor of Pernambuco Province to direct a large-scale literacy campaign aimed at both agricultural workers and the urban poor. After a coup in 1964, Freire was placed in prison, only to be freed and to flee to Chile 75 days later after yet another coup. His first wife died in 1986 and Freire later remarried, this time, his former student and fellow radical educator, Ana Maria Araujo.

Four central themes stand out in the work of Freire. First, dialogue was a critical part of his educational vision, for both intellectual and ethical reasons. From an intellectual standpoint, dialogue was important to offset the deleterious effects of what he called the “banking” system of instruction. In this system, education is viewed as being a process of depositing information into what was perceived to be the empty vessel of the mind. In Freire's view, to truly promote learning that was substantive and lasting, a teacher had to build around the history and knowledge of the student. From an ethical standpoint, to even consider that a student had cultural and intellectual resources of value was indeed a moral act. Moreover, a consideration of these resources in educational planning, in Freire's mind, was necessary to prevent “cultural invasion,” or the imposition of the ways of thinking and acting of the privilege on the oppressed, at the expense of the humanity of both groups.

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