ABSTRACT
The writings of Freire are very well known among adult educators, even though some have confessed to finding him difficult to comprehend. Freire’s ideas emerged against the background of the oppression of the masses in Brazil by an elite, who reflected the dominant values of a nonBrazilian culture. His writings epitomized an intellectual movement that developed in Latin America after the Second World War, which was a synthesis of Christianity and Marxism and which found its theological fulfilment in liberation theology: its educational philosophy was Freire’s own work. From this background, it may be seen that at the heart of his educational ideas lay a humanistic conception of people as learners, but also an expectation that once they had actually learned they should not remain passive but become active participants in the wider world. Hence, for Freire, education could never be a neutral process; it is either designed to facilitate freedom or it is ‘education for domestication’ (Freire, 1973c:79), which is basically conservative.
