ABSTRACT
In the early 1970s, a new voice began to influence progressivism-that of an exiled Brazilian educator named Paulo Freire. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire developed in a theoretical form many of the basic ideas and approaches to education that emerged out of his literacy campaigns in northeastern Brazil in the early 1960s. At that time, Freire was philosophy professor at the University of Recife and also director of an adult literacy program. The early 1960s was a time of great transition and uncertainty in Brazil, associated with an intensification of cultural struggle between authoritarian populism on the political right and a growing democratization movement on the left. The democratization movement, unfortunately, remained a largely urban and middle class movement, without very deep rhizomes in urban slums or rural villages where poverty, illiteracy, and fatalism were the norm. It was Freire’s conviction that democracy would not succeed in Brazil without the support and active involvement of these disenfranchised poor, and one of the effective barriers to involvement was illiteracy. At the same time, Freire had grown increasingly frustrated with existing literacy and adult education programs designed to “serve” the poor. For one thing, they reduced literacy to a series of discrete skills in the decoding of language, stripping language from its use in everyday life to organize power relations. For another thing, literacy instructors generally talked down to people, believing that the immorality and irresponsibility of the poor were the primary reasons why they remained poor. They saw their role as lifting people up out of their pathological lifestyle. Based on his reading of Hegel and Marx, Freire began to imagine an alternative form of literacy campaign, based on the development of two interrelated ideas. The first of these is reflexivity. Literacy only makes sense “as the consequence of men’s [sic] beginning to reflect about their own capacity for reflection.”1
