Paulo Freire, born on the 19th of September in 1921, was a Brazilian philosopher and radical pedagogue most known for his 1968 work Pedagogy of the Oppressed. "Language is never neutral."

Paulo was born in Recife, the capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco. Initially affluent, his family experienced hardship during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and Freire's education suffered due to his own experiences with poverty and hunger.

Freire began working as a schoolteacher in the 1940s, beginning to serve as the director of the Pernambuco Department of Education and Culture in 1946. Due to the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, where a military dictatorship was put in place with the support of the United States, Paulo Freire was exiled from his home country, an exile that lasted 16 years.

Freire then worked in Chile, until April 1969 when he accepted a temporary position at Harvard University. It was during this period, in 1968, that Freire published his most famous work, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed".

In this text, Freire criticizes what he calls the "banking method" of education, wherein a teacher "deposits" knowledge into an empty vessel, the student, or "bank". Instead, Freire calls upon teacher to engage in a more dialog-centric or creative education, one in which the suppressed experiences of the oppressed help create knowledge, fostering a social reality in which the marginalized are humanized.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed has since become the third most cited book in the social sciences, according to Elliott D. Green. As of 2000, the book had sold over 750,000 copies worldwide.

"Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination."

Paulo Freire

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  • AmericaDelendaEst [comrade/them]
    ·
    3 months ago

    I really hope i didn't fuck up by feeding these stray cats dinner once a day, they don't seem like they're getting much food other than what I put out for them and we might move this year :/ I'm really worried they're gonna starve if they're used to me feeding them and I'm suddenly gone. Idk what to do about it because I'm not taking any more cats inside

    Every night I go outside and they're all there waiting and hissing at my legs and I get a real sense of "these cats are hungry enough to try eating me if I don't put this food down for them"

      • AmericaDelendaEst [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 months ago

        maybe idk i need to do something, it just hit me that if we move they'll still show up at this porch and just kitty-cri kitty-cri-screm kitty-birthday-sad

        • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]
          ·
          3 months ago

          meow-hug

          You're doing good by helping them, looking into what options are available to help them more couldn't hurt though.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      Aside from all the problems that come with being feral cats they'll likely be fine. Cats are pretty good predators and they're not going to forget how to murder because they get one freebie a day.