Paulo Freire Quotes

A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation."

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.

Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers.

Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.

Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.

In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they existin the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.

Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming.

Indeed, some revolutionaries brand as innocents, dreamers, or even reactionaries; those who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation - the process of humanization - is not another deposit to be made in men.

In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the people's historicity as their starting point.

Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.

It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings.

Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of the students.

Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning.

Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator.

Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.