This book explores the ways in which Freire’s time and work in Chile proved to be decisive in the making of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, widely considered one of the most important books on critical pedagogy and adult learning and education in the twentieth century. The scope is confined to Paulo Freire’s years of political exile in Chile, from late November 1964 to mid-April 1969. It builds upon evidence provided by scholarly research in order to answer four questions. In which institutional contexts did Paulo Freire develop his pedagogical methods and political ideas? How was his literacy training method and participatory research approach shared throughout Latin America and the rest of the world? To what extent did his exile in Chile influenced a paradigm shift in literacy training and adult education?
This is not the first time that Freire’s legacy has been approached by scholars and researchers looking for an answer to several misconceptions concerning Freire’s intellectual and ideological journey while living in Chile. Nonetheless, few of these research pieces have been able to fill the gaps concerning the institutional and political contexts in which he developed his work and pedagogical ideas. Evidence on this period of Freire’s work, included in this book, track at least three milestones in his contributions to educational development, in overall terms, and to adult learning and worker’s education in specific terms.
- –The first milestone runs from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties. It coincides with the period in which Freire designed and experimentally applied his accelerated method in literacy training in Brazil also known as the “Paulo Freire Method.”
- –The second milestone runs from November 1964 to late 1968 and is coincident with the arrival in Chile of an important number of exiled politicians, scholars and Brazilian practitioners as well as with the completion, translation and editing of Freire’s early writings.
- –The third milestone begins by late 1968 when, once again for political reasons, Freire interrupts his work in Chile and his intellectual efforts to develop a theory on adult education as cultural action for freedom. A concept that summarized an important part of his pedagogical vision at the time when he strongly opposed a “banking approach” to education vis a vis a theoretically “liberating and critical” approach to cultural and pedagogical action with the poor and oppressed.
The primary feature of this approach may be classified today, as an intellectual effort to introduce a paradigm shift in literacy training and adult education,
The book is fully based on papers prepared for Paulo Freire’s Centennial and the celebration of fifty years since the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed drafted in the context of Freire’s activities while working as a UNESCO international consultant at ICIRA (Spanish acronym for Institute of Research and Training in Agrarian Reform). Based on primary information as well as scripts and manuscripts, drafts and articles, prepared by Freire for his teams, the authors discusses Freire’s approach to literacy training and adult education, using his intellectual and political journey in Chile as an excuse to examine the introduction to a new paradigm in adult education and learning in formal, non-formal and informal education with peasants’ organizations and working-class adults, men and women. Final remarks in each chapter are based upon the findings of historical research pieces on Freire’s educational work and its relation to the contexts in which he worked and wrote Education as a practice for freedom; Extension or Communication?; On Cultural Action and Pedagogy of the Oppressed. All of them, written between 1965 and 1969 in Portuguese, Freire’s native language, and translated, typed and originally published by publishers and editors at INDAP (Spanish acronym for Agricultural Development Institute) and ICIRA.
Once Freire left Chile, by late April 1969, some of these writings were translated to English, edited and published under the titles of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Herder & Herder in the spring of 1970, and Cultural Action for Freedom by the Harvard Educational Review and Harvard’s Center for the Study of Development and Social Change, by late 1970 when Freire cared for introducing new concepts on the adult literacy process as cultural action and on existing links among cultural action and conscientization. As a fellow of the Center for the Study of Development and Social Change and a Visiting Professor at Harvard’s Center for Studies in Education and Development Freire was assisted by Joao da Veiga Coutinho, a Jesuit priest who had studied in
Specific goals in the book, include providing new evidence on the origin of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed as well as contextual clues on the relationship between his political and pedagogical ideas and his involvement in two major social and political reforms in Chile. On one hand, the overall educational reform of the mid-sixties; on the other, an agrarian reform which introduced structural changes to modernize Chilean agriculture and transform social relationships in the countryside.
The main argument in the story reads that the relevance of Freire’s literacy training method and pedagogical ideas, based on a political approach to educational practice, found a fertile ground in modernizing contexts that helped their regional and global adoption. Moreover, that lessons learned in Chile were relevant for Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and contributed to shape the unfinished agenda of his adult education theory on cultural action for freedom. Empirical data comes from Freire’s early writings on cultural action for freedom and a book which examines Paulo Freire’s intellectual and political journey during the years of his exile in Chile. Evidence comes from Freire’s manuscripts and publications distributed in the late sixties by ICIRA, Spanish acronym for the Instituto de Capacitación e Investigación en Reforma Agraria, in support of both a national literacy campaign, adult education and peasant training programs in rural areas. The attempt is to track the course of Freire’s intellectual and political journey during his exile in Chile as seen by one of his closest collaborators as well as by scholars and practitioners who participated in the process of adapting his pedagogical ideas to ongoing policies and practices, designed to serve the needs of out of school learners, as well as social movements, in search of opportunities of lifelong quality education for all.
To achieve its purposes the book has been organized in four chapters.
Chapter 1 approaches some unanswered questions on when, where and how were Freire’s books written, edited and published. His Preface, of the original Portuguese handwritten manuscript, is dated in Santiago, Chile, sometime during the winter of 1967, while the Preface to the first Spanish edition finishes with Santiago de Chile, autumn 1969. Some scholars imply that the manuscript of Pedagogy of the Oppressed was finished sometime in March or April 1969. By then, Freire had left Chile and was acting as Fellow and Visiting Professor at Harvard’s Center for the Study of Development and Social Change and, at
Chapters 2, 3 and 4, takes the reader into the world of practice and contribute to the commemoration acts of the 50th anniversary of the agrarian reform in Chile and Freire’s contribution to peasants’ literacy training and adult education under the turmoil of social and political changes, both in Chile and the rest of Latin America and some countries the Caribbean. Rodrigo Aravena Alvarado and José Diaz-Diego, scholars working under the sponsorship of Chile’s National Library (DIBAM), focus on the impact of Freire’s ideas upon the memories of past peasant leaders involved in the agrarian reform process during the sixties. By using evidence from secondary and primary sources, they highlight the social climate at the time and the political consequences of social and economic interventions in rural environments. The empirical base are reports and papers written both by Freire and his collaborators during his years in Chile, in depth interviews with national authorities at the institutions which hosted Paulo Freire during his exile in Chile, and interviews with a sample of peasant leaders active by the time of the research.
These pages, which introduce Pedagogy of the Oppressed, result from my observations during the last six years of political exile, observations which have enriched those previously afforded by my educational activities in Brazil. I have met, both in training courses which analyze the role of conscientização and in actual experimentation with a truly liberating education, the “fear of freedom” discussed in the first chapter of this book. Not infrequently, training course participants call attention to “the danger of conscientização in a way which reveals their own fear of freedom (…) Thought and study alone did not produce Pedagogy of the Oppressed; it is rooted in concrete situations and describes the reactions of laborers (peasant or urban) and of middle-class persons whom I have observed directly or indirectly during the course of my educative work. Continued observation will afford me the opportunity to modify or to corroborate in later studies the points proposed in this introductory work (…) I will be satisfied if among the readers of this work there are those sufficiently critical to correct mistakes and misunderstandings, to deepen affirmations and to point out aspects I have not perceived (…) In my experience as an educator with the people, using a dialogical and problem posing education, I have accumulated a comparative wealth of material which challenged me to run the risk of making the affirmations contained in this book …. (Paulo Freire, 1970. First edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder and Herder. Preface 21, 24)
To conclude, Chapter 4, prepared by Federico Brugaletta, scholar and researcher at Universidad de la Plata in Argentina, presents some relevant findings of his doctoral thesis and provides and explanation to the way in which different publishers and editors disseminated Paulo Freire’s early writings throughout Latin America and beyond. His focus points towards the analysis of political radicalization among Christian groups, coming both from catholic and protestant traditions, and sets up the intellectual context for Freirés early practices with the poorest of the poor in Brazil and Chile. Further, he examines the conditions of the editorial market in Latin America and particularly publishers and editors inspired by ecumenical churches, who published Paulo Freire’s early writings by the mid and late sixties. A special chapter is dedicated to Tierra Nueva, the Uruguayan publisher of Freire’s books as well as the publisher of the Spanish translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Focus is placed upon the particular ways in which Tierra Nueva articulated
Speaking on behalf of all the contributors, we hope this book will help understand Freire’s paradigm for adult education and literacy training and the place Pedagogy of the Oppressed occupies in contemporary research and scholarship. We also expect to take the readers into Freire’s intellectual and professional journey during his exile in Chile to show how specific training activities resulted in unpublished manuscripts that formed the basis for some of the four chapters in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
We also hope the collection of Freire’s unpublished papers, written during the years of his exile in Chile, will soon be available in a digital site for those seeking a guide to read his manuscripts and to gain free access to parts and pieces of books and papers – among them Pedagogy of the Oppressed, On cultural action and Extension or Communication? – so mythically perceived by some researchers and scholars in Latin America, North America and beyond. Altogether, these manuscripts gave birth to new approaches to educational practice and new styles of getting to know the action image of society under conditions of social and political change, which continue to be a valuable resource, for scholars and practitioners, in their efforts to transform pedagogy and education, help meet essential learning needs in deprived areas as well as accelerate social, economic and cultural development in regional and global terms.