Talk about Paulo Freire is to talk about one of the most recognized educators worldwide. This Brazilian philosopher and intellectual has become, over the years, a benchmark for modern education that does not lose sight of the importance and value of the human being, above utilitarian considerations born of a market economy excessively focused on concepts such as success. , competition and specialization. In the faculties of education, Freire's ideas and perspectives are always discussed as the A-B-C of what a good pedagogue should be, however his perspective of social education often suffers the indifference of the official media, more concerned with making the model prevail. current, more linked to the concept of education as a business, which has caused so much judgment in the formation and development of private and public schools. Let's learn more about the life and work of this great icon of Latin American education.
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire he was the son of a Brazilian military police officer and a woman who raised him under a strict Catholic upbringing. He was born on September 19, 1921, in Recife, Brazil, in a society that was about to experience an economic crisis that would shake the foundations not only of Brazilian society but of many communities around the world.
The famous October 24, 1929, known as Black Thursday for the world economy, definitively marked who would become one of the most important educators in Latin America and the world. The vision of education that Paulo Freire advocated was based on an educational method that managed to place the student within the social environment that surrounded him without abstracting him from his reality, that is, a pedagogical system for each country and each social environment.
In 1941, at the age of 20, Paulo Freire he enters the university to study law, which he would not exercise much after obtaining his degree. The Brazilian pedagogue had more than one complication to complete his studies, the precarious economic condition of his family would force him to suspend his training to help earn a common livelihood.
Freire quickly developed a special sensitivity for the lower classes of society and the situation they suffer. His marked interest in understanding the needs, especially educational needs, of the most disadvantaged strata of the social spectrum, would accompany him until his death. In the years leading up to the end of World War II, Freire chose to teach Portuguese in Brazilian secondary schools, an occupation that pleased him.
At the end of his career as a lawyer, the Brazilian researcher decides to support a union of workers who lived on the outskirts of Recife, the city of his birth. In 1944, he married Elza María Oliveira, a primary school teacher, a woman who, until her death in 1986, would be of fundamental influence in the analysis of the pedagogical methods carried out by Freire.
Thanks to the relationships he had developed with the unions, Freire obtained the position of head of the department of education and culture of the social service of the industry (SESI), an institution that he would come to run in condition of director in 1954. With the arrival of the military dictatorship in Brazil in 1964, a very important stage in the life of Paulo Freire ends. , a stage in which it makes strenuous efforts to democratize education, place the student in his or her rightful place in society, and raise awareness among students, families, and the government about the complicated socioeconomic situation of a large part of the Brazilian population.
Because of his perspective on what the educational method should be and that unfortunately is considered subversive and seditious by the new military government of Brazil, the distinguished educator leaves his country to go into exile in Chile for five years after being imprisoned twice in his homeland. In Chile he works for the Christian Democratic movement for agrarian reform and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
he attends as a visiting professor at Harvard University in 1969 when his book "Education as a practice of freedom" that had been published two years earlier, gives him the long-deserved recognition .
Among his most important works, it is worth mentioning:“Brazilian Education and Current Affairs” (1959), “Literacy and Awareness” (1963)”, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (1970), "Consciousness and history" (1979), "Ideology and education" (1981), "On education" (1982), "Popular education" (1982) "Pedagogy:dialogue and conflict" (1995), "Pedagogy of autonomy" (1996), etc.
The richness of the Paulo Freire heritage lies in the innovation that he propelled by introducing a way of learning that not only teaches the illiterate individual to read and write, but also makes him discover his identity within his historical and social context, so that from this foundation, form a harmonious society. and supportive in which each person fulfills the role that they personally prefer, without any type of submission and imposition.
As a result of a political amnesty, Paulo Freire He returns to Brazil where he is received with great enthusiasm by those who see in him the true manager of comprehensive education for the South American country. Paulo Freire he passes away on May 2, 1997 in Sao Paulo Brazil at the age of 75.