Paulo Freire Quotes.
Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation. The content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality.
Education is freedom.
At times, I have been criticized by some philosophers of education, who place me in postures that they classify pejoratively as ‘revolutionary.’ But I have had the satisfaction of being invited to work in societies making progressive efforts without wavering. They were changing, and so they called on me.
Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.
Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people–they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.
Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.
Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause–the cause of liberation.
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.
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.
Every society needs to examine itself in relation to other societies.
The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.
The future isn’t something hidden in a corner.The future is something we build in the present.
Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
It would be extremely naive to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically.
In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in 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.
Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination.
The more people participate in the process of their own education, and the more people participate in defining what kind of production to produce, and for what and why, the more people participate in the development of their selves. The more people become themselves, the better the democracy.
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.
How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?
Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information
The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people.
I am an educator who thinks globally.
At a certain point in their existential experience, the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration.
Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.
Educators need to know what happens in the world of the children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of their world, what they know independently of the school, and how they know it.
Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is him/herself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.
Dialogue cannot exist without humility.
No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.
To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them.
No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so.
It’s no sin to make a critical study of Brazil’s reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don’t.
It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society.
Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.
Learning is a process where knowledge is presented to us, then shaped through understanding, discussion and reflection.
Education is an act of love, and thus an act of courage
Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory becomes simply “blah, blah, blah, ” and practice, pure activism.
Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.
