ABSTRACT
Paulo Freire was one of the most important and influential writers on the theory and practice of critical education in the twentieth century and remains extremely influential today. He was born in Recife in north-eastern Brazil on 19 September 1921. He first became internationally known as an adult educator because of the literacy programmes he developed and out of which came his core ideas about critical education. The pedagogy of the oppressed is a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity. This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come liberation. After Brazil declared an amnesty in 1979, those people who had been exiled were able to return to Brazil. Freire too returned and accepted a position to teach at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo and the University of Campinas.
