CHAPTER 3 - SECTION 2

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A FIRST DRAFT OF THIS PARTICULAR CHAPTER. PLEASE EXCUSE THE ROUGHNESS OF IT.



Paulo Freire Freedom School is focused on social justice and environmental sustainability. They believe young people learn when the information they are learning can be connected to their own environment, the world they live in, and the situations they encounter and care about on a day to day basis. They do not shy away from discussing the social issues facing the world, quite the contrary, they want these issues to be breached and grounded in hope. They encourage their students to not only think about matters in a realistic way, but to also think about solutions. Let’s face it, this is not an easy world to live in. Perhaps the hope for the future lies in the stimulation of our younger generation’s minds to tap into the possibilities of a society free from oppression.

Later when I arrived home I would be scanning my bookshelf for Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto and I would see printed on the binding of a bright red book: Freire The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I laughed at my ignorance to make the connection when I first found the Paulo Freire School! Of course a social justice school would name themselves after Paulo Freire! He spent his life working to educate the masses by teaching literacy to the poor so that those in poverty could have a voice making the world a less oppressive place.

Paulo Freire was born in Racife, Brazil in 1921 in a middle class economic family. Yet, Freire's family would begin to know poverty and hunger as the 1929 Great Depression of America reached into Brazil sending the Freire's on their own personal downward spiral. Paulo began to play in different circles, in the circles of the poor children of Brazil, and became aware at a very young age of the role of class as the poor children viewed him as not poor, but just as one that accidentally landed into their turf. (pedagogy of the oppressed pg 13)

Richard Shaull writes in his introduction for Pedagogy of the Oppressed a commentary of how this experience was pivotal in Freire’s life path:

"His sharing of the life of the poor also led him to the discovery of what he describes as the “culture of silence” of the dispossessed. He came to realize that their ignorance and lethargy were the direct product of the whole situation of economic, social and political domination... And it became clear to him that the whole educational system was one of the major instruments for the maintenance of this culture of silence."

Paulo Freire wrote that during his hunger he was not able to learn or think, the hunger so encapsulated his mind and body. He wasn’t “dumb” or “unteachable,” he was hungry. At 11 years old he made the commitment to fight against the plight of hunger. Amazingly, after his family lifted themselves out of poverty and Paulo received his law degree from the University of Racife, the dedication to the trials of his younger years did not leave but continued to fuel his life’s purpose.

Freire began to see the current system of what he called “neutral” education as the cause for students not analyzing or asking questions about the oppressive actions of history. This lack of dialogue in the classroom created, as mentioned about, what he called ‘a culture of silence’ where the people submerged under low socio-economic status never get out. He also saw the education system as being set up not to allow the poor to release themselves from the stranglehold that is poverty. If the poor never ask questions or can’t read and write, then those on high will always have a power over others.

He wanted to be instrumental in the creation of conscientização, a critical consciousness, where people question their social situation, question the actions of history, and reflect and commence in dialogue with fellow students and teachers. The greatest obstacle to full conscientização was literacy. In the end Freire believed if the poor could become literate, they could participate in conscientização and the entire social construction of reality could be examined and altered. That is majorly powerful stuff. Imagine a whole section of society -even today- and imagine the huge section in Brazil in the 1940’s and 50’s, sitting down and looking at their own poverty and looking at the reasons why their poverty existed; what is their history, what is their present, where is the future headed and dialoguing with others in the same situation to jam out ideas as to how this road can fork! The whole problem of deeming the norm as inevitable, feeling so helpless as the machine gears and jerks on, feeling like spectators to our own existence, and looking down at our children and realizing they too are inevitably stuck in the cycle, in the circle that has gone all wrong for so many. Pretty powerful stuff indeed.

Freire devised a philosophy of education called Popular Education; a social theory that empowers and challenges students to examine world views in order to pursue critical social change and to ignite dialogue in learning. And that is what he did. Freire saw to it that the poor of Brazil became literate citizens. In 1962, Freire was involved in a project to teach reading to 300 farm workers which was successfully completed in an amazing 45 days! This sensational accomplishment won him great notice, in both a positive way, and a negative way. The 1964 military coup changed the Brazilian government and Paulo Freire was jailed for 70 days before being exiled from the country.

Amazingly, he began working in Chile fighting illiteracy of the poor in that nation fronting the accomplishment of Chile to
become one of the top five countries in the world to lift itself from illiteracy! The amount of things this man has done is a longer biography than I can site here, but Paulo Freire’s effort to not only educate but change the way in which people were being educated about oppressive elements of society is such a staggering feat that the fact that his history is not taught along next to other greats in the world is a little disconcerting. I had never heard of this man in school. I found him on my own after college. Such a shame. I’m going to guess that many of you had no idea who he was either. Did you know he worked as a consultant for Harvard’s school of Education? Me neither.