Paulo Freire

Interview with Freire pFA pFA

“Perhaps the most influential thinker about education in the late twentieth century, Paulo Freire has been particularly popular with informal educators with his emphasis on dialogue and his concern for the oppressed.”

Biography Born- September 19,1921 Died- May 2, 1997 Nationality- Brazilian Occupation- Educator, author Known for- Theories of education Inspiration came from- Jean-Paul Satre, Louis Althusser, Frantz Fanon (French philosophers), Karl Marx (german philosopher), and many more philosophers of his time.

Freire was born in 1921 to a middle class family in Recife, Brazil. Like many other families living during the 1930s, his suffered from poverty and hunger during the Great Depression. Freire stated that poverty had severely affected his ability to learn and in grade school he fell two grades behind his fellow classmates. As a result of this, Freire was determined to dedicate his life to improving the lives of the poor.

After his family’s situation improved, Freire entered the University of Recife where he enrolled in the Faculty of Law and also studied philosophy and the psychology of language. He worked part-time as an instructor of Portuguese in a secondary school while attending classes. During this period he read the works of Marx and also Catholic intellectuals, all of whom strongly influenced his educational philosophy.

In 1944, Freire married a woman named Eliza Maia Costa, a grade school teacher. Eliza gave Freire three daughters and two sons. As a parent, Paulo's interest in theories began to grow, leading him to do more extensive reading on education, philosophy, and the sociology of education than in law. Freire actually passed the bar to become a lawyer, but quickly abandoned that career to go work as a welfare official and later as a director of the Department of Education and Culture of the Social Service in the State of Pernambuco.

While working there he made many connections that got him into direct contact with the urban poor. The assignments he undertook there led him to begin to communicate with the dispossessed that would later develop into his method for adult education. He was awarded a doctoral degree at the University of Recife, because of his great work.

Freire went on to become the first director of the university of Recife’s Cultural Extension Service, which brought literacy programs to thousands of peasants in the northeast. Freire won the attention of the poor and gave them hope that they could start to have a say in their homeland. The military decided to over through the reform minded, therefore sending Freire to jail for seventy days. In Jail, Freire began his first educational work, Education as the Practice of Freedom.

Once released from jail, Freire worked in Chile for five years with adult education programs. Because of Freire’s work Chile was acknowledgment as one of the five nations, which had best succeeded in overcoming illiteracy.

Toward the 1969, Freire left Latin America to come to the United States, where he taught as a Visiting Professor at Harvard’s center for Studies in Education and Development and was also Fellow at the Center for the Study of Development and Social Change. It is during this time that he wrote his famous work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Education is to be the path to permanent freedom.

In 1970, Freire left Harvard to serve as a consultant and eventually as Assistant Secretary of Education for the World Council of Churches in Switzerland. He traveled all over the world assisting educational programs of the newly independent countries. In 1979, Paulo returned from exile under an amnesty agreement and took a faculty position at the University of Sao Paulo.

In 1992, Freire celebrated his 70 th birthday in New York with over two hundred adult educators, reformers, scholars and activists. He was honored for all his work done across other countries and is still recognized today as one of the greatest educators of our time.

Conclusion Freire believed educators task was to teach the learner more than just mere content. He sought to offer the poor not only the tools of human agency but the awareness to apply those tools in a manner that would allow individuals the freedom to reach their full potential. He believed the purpose of education is to better the human condition. His courage enabled him to cope with the daily challenges of educating Brazils poor. And courage led Freire to acknowledge the broader impact and the realities of their profession.

Sources Smith, M. K. (1997, 2002)’Paulo Freire and informal education’, the encyclopedia of informal education. [ Last update: May 29, 2012] Encyclopedia of World Biography. (n.d.). Paulo freire biography. Retrieved from freire