Product Description

This text argues that the ignorance and lethargy of the poor are the direct result of the whole economic, social and political domination. The book suggests that in some countries the oppressors use the system to maintain a "culture of silence". Through the right kind of education, the book suggests, avoiding authoritarian teacher-pupil models and based on the actual experiences of students and on continual shared investigation, every human being, no matter how impoverished or illiterate, can develop a new awareness of self, and the right to be heard.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13522 in Books
• Published on: 1996-01-25
• Original language: Portuguese
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was a Brazilian educational theorist.

Customer Reviews

A Book for Our Time
Friere's classic book seeks to understand the way that the form in which education is offered can have a profound impact on the effect which that education has. His work comes out of the experience of running literacy classes for peasant people in Latin America. What he found was that traditional types of educational practice reproduced passivity and disinterest, and reinforced in those people's eyes the idea that they could never acquire an education. He sought to offer a different kind of education where the process of learning was linked with an understanding of the dynamics of power and oppression. For Friere education was about the process of "becoming fully human" and coming to a consciousness of the world around you. He found these methods to be extremely successful, as have many educators working with socially marginalised groups who have entered education. At a time when large numbers of "non-traditional" students are entering the 'new university' sector in the UK, this book, offers an important resource to teachers and students alike. Though it has been several years since it was first published, it deserves to come into its own yet again.

unreadable???? ok i admit it was kinda hard first time round
I admit that for most this hardly makes light bedtime reading, but it is worth persevering with. If you expect to pick it up, read it and instantaneously know everything there is to know about oppression then you are sadly mistaken, and as far as I understand the book at the moment, the author would not hope for that to be the case.

But this book is so so so worth persevering with. When the Freire's ideas are pondered over within the context of life, living and working with the oppressed, as a subject of oppression, maybe even as an oppressor, this book will be invaluable in the search for living out liberation.

Great

An essential book for those who wish to understand how education is strongly connected to social inequality and how it is used to dominate the oppressed masses. This book is interesting and relevant not only within the context of Brazilian inequality, but also in a wider context that involves every developing country and perhaps even developed ones.