Freire: Liberation Pedagogy
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Technology @ School Paulo Freire’s Liberation Pedagogy You can research the Internet to broaden your perspectives on Paulo Freire’s liberation pedagogy. For websites committed to Freire’s pedagogy, go to the Paulo Freire Institute and the Freire
Project. Relate the discussion of Freire’s educational ideas on these sites to the commentary in this chapter.
and contradictions that affect a person’s life. To raise their consciousness, students, in dialogue with their teachers, need to reflect on their own lives and write their personal and collective histories of their racial, ethnic, language, economic, and social groups. They must consciously examine the real, rather than the make-believe situations impacting their lives. They need to cut through the phoniness that may cloud their thinking and identify the people and conditions that deny them the freedom to define and express themselves.63
4-11b Education and Schooling Freire asserted that the school’s curriculum and instruction can either indoctrinate students to conform to an official version of knowledge, or it can challenge them to develop a critical consciousness that empowers them to engage in self-liberation. For example, an official version of history that celebrates the achievements of white EuroAmerican males and minimizes the contributions of women, African Americans, Latinos, and other minority groups creates a false consciousness. An education that defines a person’s worth in terms of wealth and power and sees schooling as a ticket to success in an exploitative economic system cannot be truly humanizing.64 For Freire, teachers cannot be impartial or uncommitted on social, political, and economic issues.65 Those who claim to be completely objective are really imposing social, economic, political, and educational structures erected and controlled by dominant classes. He urges teachers to develop a critical consciousness about the real power Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 51. 64 Stanley Aronowitz, introduction to Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, p. 4. 65 Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, p. 22. 63
1964 Imprisoned by military regime in Brazil, then exiled to Chile 1967 Publishes Pedagogy of the Oppressed
1986 Awarded UNESCO Prize for Education for Peace
1968 Visiting Professor at Harvard University 1969 Educational Advisor to World Council of Churches
1988–1991 Secretary of Education for Sao Paulo 1997 Death
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 1961 Organizes literacy campaign
1980 Returns to Brazil
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