Freire


 * Paulo Freire Profile**

Paulo Freire was born in Brazil in 1921. The Depression of 1929 impacted his family, and he quickly became exposed to poverty and its impact on life, particularly education. Though he attended law school, Freire went straight into education with his wife, whom he married in 1944. This led to government jobs for nearly two decades, until a military coup resulted in his imprisonment. He spent some time in other South American countries working in education, as well as becoming an author (his most famous work being Pedagogy of the Oppressed). He spent a year as a professor at Harvard, then moved to Switzerland until 1980, when he could return to Brazil. He was appointed Secretary of Education for Sao Paulo in 1988. He died there in 1997.

**Essential Learning Questions **

//Is learning a solitary activity undertaken by an individual, or is learning a social activity, something done by a group within a context?//
 * Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are 'owned' by the teacher. (61)
 * At the point of encounter there are neither utter ignoramuses nor perfect sages; there are only people who are attempting, together, to learn more than they now know. (71)

//Is learning primarily focused on the transmission of facts and information or is it focused on the development of understanding of concepts and new knowledge?//
 * This is the banking concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. (53)
 * Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information. (60)
 * Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation. (65)
 * Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education. (73-74)

//Is our goal as educators to prepare an individual who can recall sets of information or develop groups of individuals who can apply the information to as yet unsolved problems?//
 * The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own. (62)
 * Education as the practice of freedom – as opposed to education as the practice of domination – denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people. (62)
 * Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers. (64)
 * The banking method emphasizes permanence and becomes reactionary; problem-posing education – which accepts neither a “well-behaved” present nor a predetermined future – roots itself in they dynamic present and becomes revolutionary. (65)
 * Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education. (73-74)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Does development precede learning, or does learning precede development?//
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As people develop into the category of ‘unoppressed’ they recognize that they can think on their own, and intelligently at that, which leads to their capacity to learn. Prior to this they believe they must rely on the oppressors to know what they need to know. (chpt 1)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It is necessary to trust in the oppressed and in their ability to reason. (48)

All quotes are from //Pedagogy of the Oppressed//.