Critical Essay by
Dr. Norma Bouchard
Executive Vice President, Provost and Chief Academic Officer
Chapman University
View Bio
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (1921-1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher. He is best known for his contributions to the field of Critical Pedagogy.
One of four children, Freire was born in Recife, the capital of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco (Northeastern Brazil). Though a member of a middle-class family, Freire’s life was marked by years of economic hardship. In 1929, the Great Depression severely impacted the financial stability of the Freires, forcing them to adapt to precarious circumstances. In 1934, Freire's father passed away, leaving the family to rely on a modest pension for survival. Eventually, the family moved to Jaboatão in search of better opportunities.
Freire's educational journey was shaped by grit and resilience. As a scholarship recipient, he was able to pursue secondary education at Oswaldo Cruz in Recife. From there, he embarked on higher education, studying jurisprudence while concurrently exploring philosophy, psychology of language, and linguistics. In 1947, he graduated with a thesis focused on adult literacy, showcasing his early interest in educational reforms.
Despite obtaining a law degree and passing the bar exam, Freire's passion for teaching led him down a different path. He chose to become a Portuguese teacher in secondary schools, laying the foundation for his future endeavors in education. Freire eventually took on a role with the Social Service of Industry (SESI) and, alongside his first wife, Elza Maia Costa de Oliviera, joined Catholic Action.
Freire’s decision to join Catholic Action, a Christian movement focused on social justice activism, reflects his concerns for the marginalized and the oppressed. These concerns were likely rooted in Freire’s own experiences in Pernambuco. Brazil’s historical legacies of colonialism and slavery, particularly evident in Pernambuco, heightened Freire’s awareness of systemic social injustices.
Brazil, which remained a Portuguese colony from 1500 to 1822 and abolished slavery in 1888, struggled with poverty, hunger, lack of access to health care and other social injustices well into the 20th century. Freire became increasingly focused on the role of education in effecting change and began to involve himself with literacy projects aimed at enabling poor adults to acquire reading and writing skills within weeks or months through a method that sought to contextualize the acquisition of language with the world that was most familiar to the learners. His work gained attention and governmental support. In 1961 he was appointed Director of the Department of Cultural Extension at the University of Recife, where he conducted large-scale application of his theories. In one of his most notable experiments, 300 sugarcane workers were taught to read and write in 45 days.
Following Brazil’s coup d’état of 1964, Freire's commitment to social transformation brought him into conflict with Brazil's ruling military junta. He was imprisoned for 70 days before going in exile in Bolivia and then Chile where he remained for five years, implementing his literacy projects with Chilean farmworkers and eventually working for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In 1967, he published his first book, Education as the Practice of Freedom (also known as Education for Critical Consciousness). In 1969, he wrote his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which was also published in Spanish and English in 1970 (but released in Brazil only in 1974). This defining work proposed an approach to education that emphasized dialogue and critical thinking to foster a deeper understanding of societal realities and empower individuals to question oppressive structures and enact meaningful change.
In 1969 Freire was offered a professorship at Harvard University and authored two essays that would become part of the book Cultural Action for Freedom. Yet, it was Pedagogy of the Oppressed the book that launched Freire’s notoriety. Widely recognized as one of the most significant works of the 1960s and 1970s, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, earned Freire the status of a prominent intellectual figure in progressive circles.
Freire’s career continued in Geneva where he became an education advisor to the World Council of Churches as well as a specialist in education reforms in former Portuguese colonies, including Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. In 1980 Freire returned to Brazil, joining the Workers’ Party of São Paulo and supporting Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (“Lula”), the future President of Brazil. He oversaw Brazil’s adult literacy project for over 5 years and engaged in various collaborative works describing the applications of his ideas in different contexts: A Pedagogy for Liberation (1987), Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (1987), Learning to Question (1989), and We Make the Road by Walking (1990). In 1986, he was awarded the UNESCO Prize for Education for Peace and in 1989 he became Secretary of Education in São Paulo, the most populous city of Brazil, eventually leaving the position to fully dedicate himself to writing. That same year, the Paulo Freire Institute was established in São Paulo to disseminate his theories on popular education. Freire died in São Paulo of heart failure in 1997.
Freire’s work merges various philosophical and political intellectual traditions, including liberalism, humanism, phenomenology, existentialism, Marxism, radical Catholicism, critical theory, and postmodernism, into a theory of education that integrated pedagogy with political praxis, education with the social transformation of marginalized and oppressed individuals and communities.
Focused on the concept of conscientização, or a conscientization, Freire’s idea of education is both an ontological and historical process of humanization, an ongoing, dynamic and ultimately unfinished process of personal and collective liberation from alienation and exploitation (or dehumanization). However, Freire believed that forms of conscientization varied according to different communities. In his observations, he noted that peasants’ cultures generally lacked a critical understanding of their worlds and thus were more likely to interpret their conditions mythically, through fate and destiny, while urban poor had developed a higher form of consciousness but of a reformist type. By contrast, conscientization, as Freire understood it, implies the progressive development of an informed consciousness that is transformative and is achievable through an innovative education model.
Against the traditional or, according to Freire, "banking" concept of education, where knowledge is transmitted authoritatively from teacher to student, Freire proposes a "problem-posing" model founded on humility, respect, care, and listening. This model fosters continuous consciousness through questioning, critiquing, dialoguing, investigating, and debating. Education, thus conceived, becomes an ongoing, unfinished act of cognition and becoming--a practice of freedom empowering marginalized individuals to challenge and transform systemic injustices into what Freire calls a “revolutionary futurity”.
Freire’s work leaves a complex legacy. Some critics faults its eclectic merging of philosophical and political traditions while others praise it as an active process of critical engagement, a dynamic unfolding of interpretation and re-interpretation of bodies of knowledge. His work has also been criticized for its oversimplification of conventional or teacher-centric models of education as oppressive instruments at the service of social and political hegemonies. In these critics’ views, not all education systems perpetuate forms of domination and the subject-specific knowledge of conventional education can equip learners with the skills to critically analyze complex issues. Other critics still, fault Freire for his binary, essentializing assumptions of oppressors and oppressors as well as for his lack of more nuanced understanding of modes of oppressions across lines of race, ethnicities, and gender. Lastly, the practical applications and potential limitations of Freire’s work have also been the subject of much debate.
Notwithstanding the critical reception of Paulo Freire's work, it is undeniable that his intellectual legacy continues to inspire discussions and debates about the complex role of education in society. His innovative ideas have had a profound impact on the way education is conceptualized and practiced and have inspired educational initiatives and social movements worldwide, especially in contexts of poverty and inequalities. His methods have also been applied to a range of emancipatory education initiatives outside formal school systems, including literacy campaigns, community development projects, and grassroots activism. Though subject to scrutiny and debate, Freire's contributions remain foundational in shaping contemporary discourses on the transformative potential of education.
Back to full collection
