Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality.
Paulo FreireIt's really not possible for someone to imagine himself/herself as a subject in the process of becoming without having at the same time a disposition for change. And change of which she/he is not merely the victim but the subject.
Paulo FreireIt is in our incompleteness, of which we are aware, that education as a permanent process is grounded. Women and men are capable of being educated only to the extent that they are capable of recognizing themselves as unfinished.
Paulo FreireThe former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed.
Paulo FreireTrue generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.
Paulo FreireSubmission to suffering is a form of annihilation, but transformation of suffering rekindles a faith that gives life.
Paulo FreireKnowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
Paulo FreireHow can I be an educator if I do not develop in myself a caring and loving attitude toward the student, which is indispensable on the part of one who is committed to teaching and to the education process itself.
Paulo FreireEducators need to know what happens in the world of the children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of their world, what they know independently of the school, and how they know it.
Paulo FreireWhat if we discover that our present way of life is irreconcilable with our vocation to become fully human?
Paulo FreireIf it is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings.
Paulo FreireCertain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.
Paulo FreireThe teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.
Paulo FreireEducation either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
Paulo FreireIt is truly difficult to make a democracy. Democracy, like arty dream, is not made with spiritual words but with reflection and practice. It is not what I say that says I am a democrat, that I am not racist or machista but what I do. What I say must not be contradicted by what I do. It is what I do that bespeaks my faithfulness or not to what I say.
Paulo FreireThe role of the educator is one of tranquil possession of certitude in regard to the teaching of not only contents but also of 'correct thinking.'
Paulo FreireThe behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.
Paulo FreireThe earliest language was body language and, since this language is the language of questions, if we limit the questions, and if we only pay attention to or place values on spoken or written language, then we are ruling out a large area of human language.
Paulo FreireThe more people participate in the process of their own education, and the more people participate in defining what kind of production to produce, and for what and why, the more people participate in the development of their selves. The more people become themselves, the better the democracy.
Paulo Freire[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.
Paulo FreireThe oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.
Paulo FreireOne of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success.
Paulo FreireIt would be extremely naive to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically.
Paulo FreireAs one might expect, authoritarianism will at times cause children and students to adopt rebellious positions, defiant of any limit, discipline, or authority. But it will also lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom.
Paulo FreireLeaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.
Paulo FreireNo matter how much someone may irritate me, I have no right to puff myself up with my own self-importance so as to declare that person to be absolutely incompetent, assuming a posture of disdain from my own position of false superiority.
Paulo FreireIt is essential for the oppressed to realize that when they accept the struggle for humanization they also accept, from that moment, their total responsibility for the struggle.
Paulo Freire... there are moments in which the teacher, as the authority talks to the learners, says what must be done, establishes limits without which the very freedom of learners is lost in lawlessness, but these moments, in accordance with the political options of the educator, are alternated with others in which the educator speaks with the learner.
Paulo FreireThe future isn't something hidden in a corner.The future is something we build in the present.
Paulo FreireThis capacity to go beyond the factors of conditioning is one of the obvious advantages of the human person.
Paulo FreireThe revolutionary's role is to liberate, and to be liberated, with the people--not to win them over.
Paulo FreireIt doesnt hurt to repeat here the statement, still rejected by many people in spite of its obviousness, that education is a political act.
Paulo FreireIt's no sin to make a critical study of Brazil's reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don't.
Paulo FreireI have never said, as is sometimes believed, or even suggested that lower-class children should not learn the so-called educated norm of the Portuguese language of Brazil. What I have said is that the problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power.
Paulo FreireThe road to revolution involves openness to the people, not imperviousness to them; it involves communion with the people, not mistrust.
Paulo FreireThe more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role impressed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.
Paulo FreireThis book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.
Paulo FreireWelfare programs as instruments of manipulation ultimately serve the end of conquest. They act as an anesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solutions of these problems.
Paulo Freire