ABSTRACT
The notion of love and its manifestation in our work and our lives does not refer to the more traditional, romanticized version of 'love', but what Freire calls "armed love". Armed love forges a path, a humanizing education, through which teachers and students together become more and more conscious about their presence in the world, taking into consideration their needs, but also the needs and aspirations of others. To do so requires that educators recognize that every prescribed behavior also represents an imposition that moves us toward an abstracted and false understanding of the self and the world. In order to transform the world in this manner and create educational programs that support the social agency, empowerment, and self-determination of students, we must labor to teach critically in ways that reconnect the heart, mind, and body. Whether we are conscious of it, when we perpetuate the tenets of self-esteem, we simultaneously dismantle the ability to critically engage with reality.
