SELDOM do individuals, especially those from the Third World, have such an impact on the world scene even less seldom do educationalists have truly worId-wide impact. Yet such was that of the educational 1st. Paulo Freire, that his recent death was marked and lamented literally throughout the world.
Known initially, and pre-eminently, for his practical work in literacy in his native Brazil and, later, throughout Latin America and beyond, Freire was, without doubt, one of the major figures of educational theory and practice of the 20th century. For Freire, education was not just a process of learning - it was nothing short of "the practice of freedom".
The breath of Freire's achievements and approach can be gleaned at one level from his major contribution to the theory of education in his world famous work Pedagogy of the Oppressed - which became the handbook for literacy work among the poor world-wide and, at an entirely different level, from his practical and rooted critique of the approach of agricultural extension workers in Brazil. His greatest contribution is arguably this ability to forge broad reflections on educational practice from practical struggles to realise literacy and education among the poor.
There are literally millions and millions of the poor who owe their "liberty" and "freedom" to the work and teachings of Paulo Freire. There could be no greater legacy.
The basics of Freire's methodology are disarmingly simple and yet so regularly ignored. For Freire, learning must be firmly rooted in the daily reality of peoples' lives as well as in their language and customs. It must be presented and explored in terms which make direct and immediate sense, otherwise its relevance and impact will not be realised. Education should include high levels of experiential involvement as well as visual imagery. For previously illiterate people, such a methodology will help them "emerged from "the culture of silence in which they had been "immersed" through illiteracy.
In this approach, teachers cease to be teachers in the traditional sense but rather facilitators who are, in turn, "educated" by their "students" in a mutual dialogue.
Unlike traditional and dominant models of education and development itself, the process is one of mutual learning.
In this sense, those formerly known as illiterate or "ignorant" cease to be objects in history and social life and, instead, become the subjects of their own futures.
The political imperative of Freire's approach is immediately apparent in the recognition that illiteracy is the result of oppression and subjugation and, thus, must be approached as such.
Overall, education, for Freire, is the practice of freedom because, ultimately, it frees not just the educated but also the educator - one from the oppression of silence and the other from the oppression of monologue, the characteristic of traditional teaching. All are capable of educating and being, in turn, educated.
Central to his approach is the notion that one can only learn by immersing oneself in the specifics of daily life as it is experienced. This contrasts markedly with traditional educational practice in which the expert or teacher distances him or herself from reality, breaking it dawn into its component parts, analysing those parts and on that basis identifying a strategy for resolving problems or difficulties.
Through Freire's methodology, the analysis of reality is not the domain of the expert or teacher but of all the people. In this way, it is the illiterate, the poor and the marginalised who generate critical consciousness and in the process of learning to read the world and their own problems, empower themselves to address them. Rather than being the passive recipients of knowledge, they become the agents of the fundamental transformation of their own reality.
While firmly rooting his work in the struggles of the illiterate and poor, Freire, however, never argued for action without critical reflection he was highly critical of activism for its own sake (a critique which has been studiously ignored by some voluntary organisations who claim to espouse his approach). Yet for him, theory could only be genuinely developed from action or daily life struggle. Judged by the immense achievements of his approach throughout the world, Freire can never be criticised nor dismissed as an idealist but rather must be seen as a practician and theorist rooted firmly in the realities of the struggles of the poor.
Of particular interest in the light of recent Irish debates on aid (and the politics which surround it) and on the Great Famine and its commemoration (and as to the pros and cons of this being political) are Freire's comments on and analysis of what he termed the phenomenon of assistencialism.
In a 1965 article, Freire criticised as especially pernicious, approaches to poverty and powerlessness which emphasise charity and assistance at the expense of the active participation of the poor in understanding and transforming their own situation.
Freire particularly criticised the violence of assistencialism in that it ignores the need for dialogue with the poor and, in effect, imposes silence on them. For Freire, the continuing provision of assistance (or aid) and the ignoring of the very conditions which make that aid or assistance necessary, is anti-democratic and denies people, even the poor, their right to be responsible. Such responsibility cannot be learned intellectually, it can only be gained through experience. Assistencialism also prevents them from entering history as active critical agents of change.
Many have attempted to "translate" Freire into the circumstances and conditions of the industrialised world. This has sometimes led to a mechanistic application of his theory and practice to profoundly different situations and contexts. It is an approach which Freire himself criticised: he emphasised that only those immersed in the realities of poverty and powerlessness in their own societies could develop a practice and a theory to overcome those realities.
Few modern educational or political writers or practitioners could claim the world as their classroom in quite the way Paulo Freire could while simultaneously his approach was entirely rooted in his native Brazilian reality as well as in its language and culture, emotions, practice and politics.