Paulo Freire (1921-1997)

To instill a feeling of confidence in the adult peasants and other oppressed folk with whom he worked, Freire developed an approach to education aimed at helping adults liberate themselves from the oppression of others. To do this he first concentrated on teaching adults to “read the world” so they could then “read the word.” By “reading the world” he meant helping adults understand the differences between the world of nature and the world of culture. Nature is made by natural forces and is not subject to change by humans. Culture on the other hand is made by humans and can be changed by humans. We “read the world” to know what is nature and what is culture. Oppressive conditions are cultural and hence capable of being changed by humans.

Literacy is a technology for helping humans change the cultural contexts in which they live so that they can achieve social justice and is hence worthwhile learning. This line of reasoning was to motivate adults to learn to read and write. To start the process, Freire followed a Functional Context Education approach, though he did not call his practice that. He used pictures of contextual information that adult literacy students “read” to distinguish what in the picture was due to nature and what was due to culture, i.e., human actions. In discussing the pictures, the adults demonstrated that they possessed a lot of knowledge about the world, including both nature and culture. This knowledge was drawn on in teaching reading.

Freire listened to the adult learners discuss pictures depicting various situations and then chose words that the students used to start the process of teaching literacy. Words with a lot of emotional meaning, such as “favela” (slum) were selected to teaching decoding of the written language. The word was first discussed, along with a picture of a situation denoted by the word. Then the word was broken into syllables –FA-VE-LA. This was continued until the word could be read (decoded) fluently. This method of “reading the world” and then “reading the word” was used extensively to build on the knowledge that adults possessed and to teach them to read the language that they used to express their knowledge. Then new knowledge was introduced to stimulate adults to take actions to change their oppressive situations.

Freire contrasted this learner-centered, participatory approach in which the adults helped determine the content and direction of their own education with the more traditional, school-centered education in which teachers determine the content and direction of education and attempt to deposit and “bank” knowledge in learner’s minds even if they do not understand the value of the new knowledge.

Note: References for this chapter can be found online in a paper entitled: Seven Pioneering Adult Literacy Educators in the History of Teaching Reading With Adults in the United States (www.nald.ca/fulltext/sticht/feb05/1.htm)