Education as the practice of freedom--as opposed to education as the practice of domination--denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as reality apart from people. Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world. In these relations consciousness and world are simultaneous: consciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it.
Paulo FreireThe atmosphere of the home is prolonged in the school, where the students soon discover thatin order to achieve some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have ben set from above. One of these precepts is not to think.
Paulo FreireSometimes a simple, almost insignificant gesture on the part of a teacher can have a profound formative effect on the life of a student.
Paulo Freire... studying is a preparation for knowing; it is a patient and impatient exercise on the part of someone whose intent is not to know it all at once but to struggle to meet the timing of knowledge.
Paulo FreireTeachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators.
Paulo Freire