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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  • Redcuban1959 [any]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Really interesting views by Catholic priest Helder Camera (He is quoted as having said, "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.")

    Some Quotes

    He never denied his communist sympathies and he openly supported dialogue with communists. He believed in the Fátima apparitons but he interpreted its call for the "conversion of Russia" as meaning that the Soviet Union would abandon it's anti-religious policies but will not be rejecting communism. He wrote: "And what was the appeal of Fatima for? Not for the annihilation of the USSR and China, but for their conversion... In 1967 the Russian Revolution will celebrate its jubilee... We must accelerate the pace, there is no more time to waste".

    Câmara endorsed the position of the Orthodox Church that spouses who were abandoned should be allowed to remarry within the church. He also admitted women's ordination.

    He criticized Pope Paul VI's removal of artificial contraception from the purview of the Second Vatican Council as "a mistake" meant to "torture spouses, to disturb peace of many homes", "a new condemnation of Galileo

    In his famous interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, he also stated that, despite his support for non-violence, he did not condemn violent tactics: "And I respect a lot priests with rifles on their shoulders; I never said that to use weapons against an oppressor is immoral or anti-Christian. But that's not my choice, not my road, not my way to apply the Gospels"

    Câmara identified himself as a socialist and not as a Marxist, but while disagreeing with Marxism, had Marxist sympathies. In the Fallaci interview, he stated, "My socialism is special, it's a socialism that respects the human person and goes back to the Gospels. My socialism is justice." He said, concerning Marx, that while he disagreed with his conclusions, he agreed with his analysis of the capitalist society.

    In a poem dedicated to French Dominican priest Louis-Joseph Lebret, Câmara states his belief that Karl Marx is in Heaven, and has him decorating Lebret of behalf of Jesus Christ.

    For a guy who started his life as a member of the Integralist Party (Fascist/Pro-Nazi Party of Brazil), he really did change all his political opinions. Besides Puyi, the Zelaya family, etc., I wonder who else used to be a right-wing/far-right person and changed their political views later in life.

    • StalinStan [none/use name]
      ·
      2 months ago

      It is unusual national socialists to drop the national part but it seems like a thing that should happen. Even the most sclerotic souls have to resonate with the truth of the immortal science. Part of every tradional culture that people want to returvn to has elements of sharing and community care or they would never have survived long enough to be a tradional culture. We don't have those today and I think even the worst chud can feel pain at their absence even if they have build up many layers to ignore it