ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Paulo Freire’s principal ideas on the links between education and social transformation. To introduce us to his thinking, the chapter looks at some of the lessons learnt in his earliest childhood; these allow us to hypothesise that his own experience of learning to read and write – taught by his parents outside the school system – was one of the key experiences on which he later based his proposal for liberation education. There follows a detailed review of the basic features of his educational proposal, stressing the importance of distinguishing the pedagogy of the oppressed from the pedagogy of the oppressor. Next, we see how his ideas were linked with the various “popular” currents present in Latin American thinking in these years. The chapter concludes with a recapitulation of the elements that need to mesh together to enable education to contribute effectively to emancipatory struggles.
