Education as a Practice of Freedom

Abstract

The present review highlights thoughts and ideas from the work Education as a Practice of Freedom, written in 1967 by the educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, considered the patron of Brazilian education. Freire presents the method of conscientization inserted in the adult literacy that the educator adopted, which was not a pedagogical repetition or the delivery of a set of letters, but rather, a literacy that had culture, poetry, creation, dialogue, criticality, and awareness, with the aim of achieving the liberating transformation that the author always believed in. Furthermore, the work highlights all the oppression that singularizes the masses, wisely understood the need to meet with the oppressed, to emerge the criticality that each one should awaken in himself, coming from education. In this way, Freire bet on an education that would awaken man's reflection, that would bring about the conscientization of the being and would fully liberate his actions for an open society based on a literacy that transforms the life of the one who, in the past, did not know the pedagogical universe, thus assuming his reality, essence and social existence based on Adult Education, which sought to drastically reduce illiteracy.