Freire, Paulo

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) reconstructed what it meant to be an educator and through his work helped to establish new forms of research and practices in the field of curriculum studies. Freire convincingly argued that educators cannot be viewed as technicians, functionaries carrying out the instructions of others. Teachers in the Freirean sense are learned scholars, community researchers, moral agents, philosophers, cultural workers, and political insurgents. Freire maintained that teaching was a political act and that educators should embrace this dimension of their work and should position social, cultural, economic, political, and philosophical critiques of dominant power at the heart of the curriculum. His notion of critical praxis, characterized as informed action, demanded curricular and instructional strategies that produced not only better learning climates, but also a better society. Called the inaugural philosopher of critical pedagogy, Freire's writings have redefined and refocused our basic beliefs of the purposes of education.

Freire was born in the north of Brazil in 1921. He learned about poverty and oppression through the lives of the impoverished peasants around whom he lived. As a lawyer, a teacher, the education minister of São Paulo, and a scholar, he constructed a devotion to work that would improve the lives of these marginalized people. Freire became one of the most well-known educators in the world by the 1970s. His work with the Brazilian poor was viewed as dangerous and subversive by wealthy citizens and the Brazilian military. When the military overthrew the reform government of the country in April of 1964, progressive activities were shut down and Freire was jailed for his insurgent teaching. After serving a 70-day jail term, Freire was deported. He continued his pedagogical work in Chile and later under the auspices of the World Council of Churches throughout the world.

To help students develop wider conceptual lenses to view their lives and social situation, Freire developed what he called codifications—pictures and photographs as part of a research process directed at the students' social, cultural, political, and economic environment. The pictures in this codification process depicted problems and contradictions in the lived worlds of students. Freire induced the students to step back from these pictures, to think about what they told them about their lives. What are the unseen forces and structures that are at work in these images, covertly shaping what is going on in the areas they depict? In this context, students began to see their lives and the hardships they suffered in a new way. They began to understand that the way things presently operated was not the only option available. The possibility for positive change embedded in this understanding is the key to Freire's educational success. Students were motivated to gain literacy in order to take part in changing both their own lives and the society. The process of learning was inseparable from individual empowerment and social change. They could not achieve the goals they sought without knowing how to read and write. Because the dominant classes did not want students from the peasant class to succeed with their academic studies, Freire's students knew that they had to excel in their studies to overcome the oppressors.

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