Paulo Freire Quotes

Brazilian educator and philosopher (1921–1997)

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (September 19, 1921 – May 2, 1997) was a Brazilian educator and theorist of critical pedagogy.

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Alternative Names: Paulo Reglus Neves Freire

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Thematic investigation thus becomes a common striving towards awareness of reality and towards self-awareness, which makes this investigation a starting point for the educational process or for cultural action of a liberating character.

Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one.

The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors.

The basic thing, starting from the initial perception of these nuclei of contradictions (which include the principal contradiction of society as a larger epochal unit) is to study the inhabitants' awareness of these contradictions.

The correct method lies in dialogue. The conviction of the oppressed that they must fight in their liberation is not a gift bestowed by the revolutionary leadership, but the result of their own conscientização.

In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.

The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.

How can the oppressed, as divided unauthentic beings, participate in the pedagogy of their liberation?

Scientific and humanist revolutionary leaders, on the other hand, cannot believe in the myth of the ignorance of the people.

As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible.

Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world.

The atmosphere of the home is prolonged in school, where students soon discover that (as in the home) in order to achieve some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have been set from above. One of these precepts is not to think.

For them, having more is an inalienable right.

Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.

For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space.