Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Years before Paulo Freire was “invited” by the Brazilian government to leave his homeland after the military coup of 1964, he had begun devoting his life to the advancement of the fortunes of the impoverished people of Brazil. After his twenty-year exile he moved first to Chile, then emigrated to the United States before returning to Brazil. In the course of his work and travels in the Third World, and as a result of his studies in philosophy of education, he evolved a theory for the education of people who are illiterate, especially adults, based on the conviction that every human being, no matter how “ignorant” or submerged in the “culture of silence,” is capable of looking critically at the world in a dialogical encounter with others. Provided with the proper tools for such an encounter, the individual can gradually perceive his or her personal and social reality, and deal critically with it. When an illiterate peasant participates in this sort of educational experience he or she comes to a new awareness of self, a new sense of dignity. “I now realize I am a person, an educated person.” “We were blind, now our eyes have been opened.” “Before this, words meant nothing to me; now they speak to me and I can make them speak.” “I work, and working I transform the world.” As the illiterate person learns and is able to make such statements, the world becomes radically transformed and he or she is no longer willing to be a mere object responding to uncontrollable change. This radical self-awareness is not only the task of workers in the Third World, but of people in this country as well, including those who in our advanced technological society have been or are being programmed into conformity and thus are essentially part of the “culture of silence.”