Paulo Freire

Brazilian Educator and Theorist of Critical Pedagogy.

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements.

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter,

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating “blah.” It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world,

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action.

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

To think about tomorrow is to prophesize...

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

Humankind is not realized in silence, but in words, in work, in action-reflection.

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

It happens, however, that as they cease to be exploiters or indifferent spectators or simply the heirs of exploitation and move

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

to the side of the exploited, they almost always bring with them the marks of their origin: their prejudices and their deformations,

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

which include a lack of confidence in the people's ability to think, to want, and to know. Accordingly,

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

these adherents to the people's cause constantly run the risk of falling into a type of generosity as malefic as that of the oppressors.

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

...the fact that certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation,

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

thus moving from one pole of the contradiction to the other... Theirs is a fundamental role,

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

and has been throughout the history of this struggle.

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves...

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

Our relationship with the learners demands that we respect them

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

and demands equally that we be aware of the concrete conditions of their world, the conditions that shape them.

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

To try to know the reality that our students live is a task that the educational practice imposes on us:

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

Without this, we have no access ' to the way they think, so only with great difficulty can we perceive what and how they know.

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

... there are no themes or values of which one cannot speak, no areas in which one must be silent.

[Paulo Freire @_Paulo_Freire_]

We can talk about everything, and we can give testimony about everything.