Paulo Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)

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Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.

Paulo Freire
Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning.

Paulo Freire
Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause—the cause of liberation.

Paulo Freire
Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people.

Paulo Freire
Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - conditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them.

Paulo Freire
Our converts, on the other hand, truly desire to transform the unjust order; but because of their background they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation.

Paulo Freire
The thematics which have come from the people return to them—not as contents to be deposited, but as problems to be solved.

Paulo Freire
The task of revolutionary leaders is to pose as problems not only this myth, but all the other myths used by the oppressor elites to oppress.

Paulo Freire
In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the people's historicity as their starting point.

Paulo Freire
The correct method lies in dialogue. The conviction of the oppressed that they must fight in their liberation is not a gift bestowed by the revolutionary leadership, but the result of their own conscientização.

Paulo Freire
To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.

Paulo Freire
In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both

Paulo Freire
How can the oppressed, as divided unauthentic beings, participate in the pedagogy of their liberation?

Paulo Freire
Thematic investigation thus becomes a common striving towards awareness of reality and towards self-awareness, which makes this investigation a starting point for the educational process or for cultural action of a liberating character.

Paulo Freire
Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator.

Paulo Freire
Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers.

Paulo Freire
Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs.

Paulo Freire
For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority.

Paulo Freire
This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade

Paulo Freire
I intrepret the revolutionary process as dialogical cultural action which is prolonged in 'cultural revolution' once power is taken. In both stages a serious and profound effort at conscientização—by means of which the people, through a true praxis, leave behind the status of objects to assume the status of historical Subjects—is necessary.

Paulo Freire
Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world.

Paulo Freire
Organization is not only directly linked to unity, but a natural development of that unity. Accordingly, the leaders' pursuit of that unity is also an attempt to organize the people, requiring witness to the fact that the struggle for liberation is a common task.

Paulo Freire
In order for the oppressed to unite they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature.

Paulo Freire
In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.

Paulo Freire
As the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power.

Paulo Freire