Twenty years after Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire has been described by the renowned Swiss educator Pierre Furter as ‘a myth in his own lifetime’ (1985:301). He has become an outstanding figure in the academic world through his unique combination of theory with practical experience in the field of adult education. It is widely known that Freire became famous in the early sixties for his powerful method of literacy training (Freire 1965, Gadotti 1989, Brandao 1979, Torres 1980, Brown 1987), but his writing went far beyond explicating mere techniques for literacy training to become a landmark for critical pedagogy all over the world.