Paulo Freire
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.Collection: Education
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.Collection: Freedom
The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people.Collection: Trust
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.Collection: Education
Education is freedom.Collection: Freedom
Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.Collection: Society
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.
Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination.
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.
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.
It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the 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.
I am an educator who thinks globally.
Every society needs to examine itself in relation to other societies.
How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?
It's no sin to make a critical study of Brazil's reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don't.
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.
Just as it is important in Latin America to discuss ideas that come from North America, I think it is interesting for North Americans to discuss ideas that come from Latin America or Africa and do not insert themselves into capitalist interests.
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.Collection: Learning
Learning is a process where knowledge is presented to us, then shaped through understanding, discussion and reflection.Collection: Learning
Education is an act of love, and thus an act of courageCollection: Acts Of Courage
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.Collection: Educational
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.Collection: Teacher
Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.Collection: Teaching
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Teacher
The future isn't something hidden in a corner.The future is something we build in the present.Collection: Corners
People in communion liberate each other.Collection: People
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.Collection: Commitment
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.Collection: Educational
To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: People
The educator has the duty of not being neutral.Collection: Teacher
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.Collection: Self
Love is an act of courage.Collection: Educational
Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.Collection: Men
No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.Collection: Self
Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.Collection: Reflection
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.Collection: Teacher
If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changedCollection: Doe
Reflection and action must never be undertaken independently.Collection: Reflection
Sometimes a simple, almost insignificant gesture on the part of a teacher can have a profound formative effect on the life of a student.Collection: Teacher
I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.Collection: Teacher
How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves to be 'hosts' of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible. The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.Collection: Discovery
How can I be an educator if I do not develop in myself a caring and loving attitude toward the student, which is indispensable on the part of one who is committed to teaching and to the education process itself.Collection: Attitude
I have never said, as is sometimes believed, or even suggested that lower-class children should not learn the so-called educated norm of the Portuguese language of Brazil. What I have said is that the problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power.Collection: Children
This book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.Collection: Struggle
For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space.Collection: Space
Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.Collection: Struggle