Recife, 1921 – São Paulo (Brasil), 1997
By Daniel Suárez
The Brazilian educator was, without a doubt, the Latin American pedagogue who most influenced the political and pedagogical thinking and grassroots educational movements of Third World countries in the 20th century. Although his most important and widespread contributions were centered on popular education and adult literacy, his ideas also enriched school pedagogy and the social theory of schooling. In fact, his intellectual and political work not only holds a prominent place in the critical social tradition of education but is also an essential part of Latin American philosophical, political, and social thought, standing out as one of its most notable and innovative expressions.
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was born on September 19, 1921, in Recife. He married Elza Maria Costa Oliveira, a primary school teacher, with whom he had five children. Newly married, Freire worked as a Portuguese teacher at the Oswaldo Cruz Secondary School, where he himself had studied. Although he aspired to be an educator, he graduated in law from the Federal University of Pernambuco since it was the only university program in the region related to the humanities. After working briefly as a lawyer, he returned to teaching, wearing mourning clothes as a sign of protest and sorrow over the Second World War.
In 1947, he became director of the Department of Education and Culture of the Social Service of Industry (SESI), an organization recently created by the National Confederation of Industries (CNI). Along with other educators, led by Raquel Castro, he founded the Capibaribe Institute in the 1950s, a private institution recognized in Recife for its high standard of teaching and strong scientific and ethical training. In 1958, he participated in the 2nd National Congress of Adult Education in Rio de Janeiro.
In 1959, he obtained a doctorate in philosophy and history of education, defending the thesis Education and the Brazilian Present, and was appointed professor of philosophy and history of education at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences, and Letters. At the same time, he was elected one of the first fifteen members of the State Council of Education of Pernambuco, recognized for his “notorious knowledge and experience in education and culture.” In 1961, he was appointed director of the Department of Cultural Extension at the University of Recife. There, he had his first experiences as a professor of higher education at the School of Social Work at the same university.
Literacy as Reading the World
Using highly distinctive and suggestive language, with an absolutely innovative philosophy of education, Paulo Freire proposed that literacy and adult education should be part of a broader political and cultural liberation project, aimed at the “reading of the world” and fostering critical awareness of the oppressive daily lives experienced by marginalized groups. He fought to ensure that popular education became a political and cultural action for the emancipation of the oppressed, promoting cooperation, autonomous decision-making, political participation, and the social and ethical responsibility of learners.
Freire’s pedagogical-political theory must be understood in the context in which it emerged, as a radical policy for democratizing knowledge. In the 1960s, in Brazil’s Northeast, half of its millions of inhabitants were marginalized and illiterate. As Freire said, they lived in a “culture of silence,” subjected to the “pedagogy of the oppressor.” It was necessary to “give them the word”—or rather, for them to seize it, recreate it, and use it to write their own history.
Based on this authentic political and anthropological philosophy of education, Freire developed, through various experiences in the 1960s, his “literacy method,” founded on the principle that the educational process must start from the learner’s reality and the union between pedagogical theory and practice. The method consists of the following steps:
-
Anthropological observation and questioning by educators to achieve “cultural resonance” with the verbal universe and meaning of the learners’ world.
-
Identification of “generative words”, chosen for their rich syllabic structure and deep connection to the learners’ lived experiences.
-
Encoding these words into visual images that stimulate the transition from the “culture of silence” to cultural and political awareness.
-
Problem-posing of the concrete cultural and political context.
-
Problem-posing of the generative words through dialogue within “culture circles.”
-
Critical and creative decoding of the world, enabling participants to recognize themselves as subjects who construct their own destinies.
The first experiences took place in 1963, when 300 rural workers were taught to read and write in just 45 days. The following year, then-president João Goulart invited Freire to restructure adult literacy nationwide. The plan was to set up 20,000 culture circles to reach two million illiterate people. However, while Freire was actively working on the National Literacy Program, the military coup of March 31, 1964, led by General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, took place. Freire was imprisoned for 75 days, considered a dangerous political educator and accused of being “subversive and ignorant,” before being forced into exile.
Exile Experience Consolidates His Theory
Taking refuge in the Bolivian embassy, Freire soon traveled to Chile, where he worked for several international organizations. He participated in the educational reform led by the Christian Democrat government of Eduardo Frei Montalva, supported by the Popular Action Front of the Left. The Chilean government needed new professionals and technicians to consolidate its reforms, especially in the agrarian sector. Freire was invited to help train these new professionals. In Chile, he found a politically, socially, and educationally dynamic, rich, and challenging environment, which allowed him to review and reformulate his method, giving it theoretical structure. This experience, lasting until 1968, was crucial for consolidating his political-pedagogical work.
The results of this rich process were his books Education as the Practice of Freedom, translated into Spanish in 1969, and Pedagogy of the Oppressed, also published in Spanish that same year. These works, particularly the latter, were heavily influenced by various philosophical and sociological currents, including phenomenology, existentialism, Christianity, personalism, Marxism, and Hegelianism. At the center of his heterodox readings—which included Freud, Jung, Adler, Frantz Fanon, and Fromm—always in dialogue with liberating educational practice, Freire conceptually developed a “psychology of oppression,” a “pedagogy for liberation,” and the “critical consciousness” of the oppressed and colonized. Terms coined by Freire at this time, such as banking education, literacy as conscientization, and liberating education, became permanent fixtures in the language of critical pedagogy.
Shortly after leaving Chile, Freire spent a year at Harvard University in the United States, then moved to Geneva, where he spent sixteen years in exile. From there, he traveled the world as a “roving consultant” for the Education Department of the World Council of Churches, visiting Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas—everywhere except Brazil. During this period, he advised governments and organizations in several African countries newly freed from European colonization, helping them develop educational systems based on the principle of self-determination.
His experiences led to one of his most important works: Letters to Guinea-Bissau. He maintained direct dialogue with leaders such as Amílcar Cabral and Julius Nyerere. His work also became influenced by thinkers like Gramsci, Kosik, Habermas, and Henry Giroux. Freire later returned to the United States, where he actively engaged with the North American critical pedagogy movement.
Return Brings Administrative Experience
In August 1979, he returned to Brazil under a political amnesty. After so many years away, and in an effort to “relearn” Brazil, he traveled extensively across the country, delivering lectures, publishing articles, essays, and books, and engaging in dialogue with students and teachers. He became a professor at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) of São Paulo. He received dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from universities around the world, as well as numerous awards, including the UNESCO Peace Prize in 1987.
Upon his return, in addition to his intense academic activities, he remained a committed political activist, especially during Brazil’s democratic transition, participating in social movements and the Workers’ Party (PT). Freire once again demonstrated his social, political, and pedagogical commitment to marginalized majorities when he became Secretary of Education for the city of São Paulo during the administration of Luiza Erundina (1989–1992), then affiliated with the Workers’ Party.
His experience in government helped Freire rethink and deepen his political-pedagogical ideas, particularly regarding the tension between the political and cultural traditions of public education and popular education, an issue always present in Latin America. In his final works—especially Pedagogy of Hope, Teacher Yes, Aunt No: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, and Pedagogy of Autonomy: Necessary Knowledge for Educational Practice—Freire clearly expressed, in the simple and conversational language that always characterized him, his shift toward concerns related to public school administration.
He died on May 2, 1997, at the age of 75, leaving the world an extraordinary intellectual and ethical legacy, based on the richness of his work and the dignity with which he lived a life fully aligned with his beliefs. In 2012, he was officially declared the Patron of Brazilian Education by law.
