Paulo Freire

During the second half of 2013 it was conducted in a Municipal School of Early Childhood Education (EMEI), located in the south of the city of São Paulo, a research-intervention involving six teachers who were part of the teaching group EMEI. The research aimed to assign new meanings and directions to the continuing education of teachers who work with children 4-5 years and as a theoretical and methodological fundamentals of action-reflection-action, recommended by Paulo Freire.

Freire (2009, p.117) highlights the importance of reflection on educational practice saying,

Clarifying a point here naked and there, it needs also to be unveiled. This is the dynamics of the process of thinking about practice. That’s why we think the practice teaches to think better, just as teaches to practice better.

Based on this assumption, the researcher, who serves as educational coordinator in the universe of the research school, used strategies for the practice itself is transformed into individual and collective reflection object, in order to redirect educational activities.

Group of researchers at the University Nove and teachers.

The research began when I joined the Master in Management and Educational Practices of the University Nove (UNINOVE), and elaborated a project in the initial uneasiness pervaded the need for reflection and discussion about continuing education for teachers in service city ​of São Paulo happens and what are the contributions of this in practice of teachers of early childhood education.
Not uncommon is how often the moments of training in schools have been busy with reports, document filling, organizing events, readings schedules for compliance and other “bureaucratic activities.” Given this reality, it is crucial that changes occur in the practice of educational coordinators that are ahead of formative processes within schools as well as in the practice of teachers, taking as their own training authors. We need to rethink the moments of training so it has based on the reflection on practice and involve (the) teacher (o) for this (e) actively participate in this process.

For the development of intervention research stages were developed that favored the process of action-reflection-action, recommended by Freire. The strategies developed for the unveiling, the questioning and reflection on the practice were: dialogue with the teachers on planning of activities with the children; observation of the realization of the proposed activities; dialogue with each of the pairs of teachers of the observed rooms and socializing with other teachers during the times of formation of JEIF group (Special Day of Integral Formation), records and reflections systematized after the feedback session with the double. At all stages, the procedures used were: written record in a field diary; record of observations made by the researcher/coordinator; audio records and transcription of the material; preparation of summaries of conversations conducted in times of fed back with the double.

The research had as axis the use of the teaching practice record. I, as a researcher-coordinator, recorded activities that watched – with pictures and considerations/questions to be shared with teachers – and they recorded the activity plan and the comments made during this. From the socialization of records, summaries were made that were shared with a larger group of teachers, enabling new thinking. These reflections contributed to practice with the children and the professional growth of the teachers and the educational coordinator.

(Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope)

Students from Renascer-Belford Roxo Nucleus making Cupcakes

Inspired by the Youth and Adult Literacy Movement (Movimento de Alfabetização de Jovens e Adultos – MOVA), created by educator Paulo Freire, the MOVA-Brazil project is developed by Institute Paulo Freire (IPF) in partnership with Petrobras and with the Single Federation of Oil Workers (FUP). The MOVA-Brazil aims to promote human dignity through a literacy course that improve the citizen participation, employment and income generation conditions. This ensures learners and communities the opportunity to rebuild their destiny and earn the right to full and participatory citizenship.

In 2014 the MOVA-Brazil project completes 10 years of existence.

The actions developed in this period produced good results not only in relation to learning of reading and writing, but also in relation to the politicization of students. The methodology created strengthened the exercise of citizenship and included actions aimed at generating jobs and income, in order to improve the quality of life of those involved.

In Rio de Janeiro polo, for example, groups of 21 municipalities in the state produced crafts from newspaper, sewed pieces with fuxico, made tapestries, jewelry, embroidery, crochet, produced breads, cakes and pastries, manufactured handmade soap, developed cooking from the reuse of food, among other activities. Sharing experiences and learning caused the spread of knowledge and resulted in the formation of groups of learners who started to meet with the objective of improving their products, increasing the possibility of their commercialization and effective income generation. There was an increase in the quantity and quality of handmade products sold by the learners themselves in their communities.

Students presented with glasses.

In the state of Amazonas Polo, in northern Brazil, the Caramuri nucleus, from Rio Preto da Eva municipatlity, promoted a social action performing eye exams on students. Vision problems were identified as a major cause of the difficulties of the participants to continue the studies. Through the problem posing methods, the students claimed a position of public authority. The result was a great joint effort of exams, conducted in partnership with the Department of Social Services and the Department of Community Support.

“MOVA-Brazil” has promoted a literacy that goes beyond decoding the letters, contributing to the inclusion of learners in the world of jobs and the construction of a critical vision to change their own lives and the world where they live.

(Paulo Freire, Pedagogia of Hope)

The Paulo Freire Center for Transdisciplinary Development Research and Dialogical Education is a space for the reflection of political practice, in education. Its coordinators consider the practice of action and reflection in research education politics as part of a process which ultimately aims at the abolition of oppression. The Austrian Research Foundation for International Development (ÖFSE) and Mattersburg Circle for Development Policies at Austrian Universities (Mattersburger Kreis) have initiated the Paulo Freire Center in 2004, in Vienna, as a joint project.

Paulo Freire Center defends knowledge as a common good. They say that, even if all obstacles to knowledge and education had been removed, the following questions would remain: How can knowledge be imparted in order to be used to reach the abolition of oppression?! Is it enough to enable as many people as possible to get an education in traditional institutions? In the tradition of Paulo Freire, the Paulo Freire Center says: No, it is not enough! It is rather the teaching method and the ideological vision of education that matter.

Objectives of the Paulo Freire Center

The Paulo Freire Center pursues three objectives, focused to research education politics. The first of them is to adopt education as a reflection of practice, as a reflection on the future of development cooperation. This includes, as Paulo Freire has already said, “to learn how to read the world”, a political-economic letracy. The second objective is based on politicization of Austrian Development Cooperation. The re-appropriation of the term “politicization”, creative and ethical element of development cooperation and development politics in favor of disadvantaged or oppressed groups. Finally, to organize the dialogue between practice and research. To encourage new forms of researching, teaching and learning.

Activities planned for 2014

May, 15th to 17th 2014: Three days of Celebration of 10th anniversary of the Paulo Freire Center with guests from Brazil, Austria, Germany.

September 26th 2014: Preparatory Workshop for the 6th Austrian Development Conference – “Development in transition. Towards a Great Transformation?”

November 14th to 16th 2014: 6th Austrian Development Conference: “Development in transition. New global relations and the future of development policy”.

(Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation)

“Pedagogy of the Opressed” has been translated into urdu about 30 years after its publication and it was published by Awaz Foundation for Education, in Pakistan in 2000. Four years later, in 2004, Iraj Education & Development Foundation (IEDF) translated and published “Pedagogy of Hope”. According to the representative IEDF’s report, Irshad, the search for the two books is quite high in the development sector of the country. Paulo Freire’s ideas and principles, after the their translation into urdu, have become more easily disseminated where, before, anything or even a few was known about the educator.

Cover of the book “Pedagogy of the Opressed” in urdu

Due to a bigger appropriation of the books, it has appeared demands from the pakistani population about Freire’s specifics expressions, as “Problem Posing Methods” (Leitura do Mundo), generative themes (temas geradores), conscientization (conscientização), etc. Readers, according IEDF, have requested the translations of the terms mentioned into urdu. Therefore, Sudhar, a non-governamental organization (NGO) from Pakistan, specialized in children, has asked the foundation to elaborate a book which could explain these terms, making them be of easier comprehension for all interested.
Irshad reports that the text has been completed and it is waiting only the its review to be published.

Cover of the book “Pedagogy of Hope” in urdu

(Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope)

On January 31, 2014, Vitor Barbosa, president of the Angolan Network of Civil Society of Education for All, participated in an interview for the radio program “Angola Fala Só”. Vitor is a professor, but he prefers to identify himself as freirean educator, following the logic “not an educator to the student, not a student for the educator but an educator-student and student-educator. Nobody educates theirrselves, nobody educates the other, people educate each other in their interaction mediated by the surrounding ” by Paulo Freire.

Vitor pointed out the importance of investment in early childhood education. The educator says that children who are able to attend educational institutions from 3 to 5 years, developed a number of skills and competencies that allow to break the barriers to learning of the following series, reducing repetition rates. He also stressed that children who grow up in an environment in which parents read and write, are predisposed to succeed in school life.

Vitor Barbosa, president of the Angolan Network of Civil Society of Education for All

However, it is not only in the perspective of reading and writing that education should be thought. In this sense, the president of the Angolan network said that the function of education is not only to prepare for the job market. According to him, it has a broader role, the one about teaching values such as respect and other more. It needs to be able to connect what you think with what you feel, to go beyond schooling, to form citizens. The educator, to achieve this goal, must be supported on three pillars, their self-esteem, status conferred on them by society and constant professionalism. For this reason, it is important to encourage contact between rulers and ruled and realize what Freire was appointed in The party as an educator-student: “It is as impossible to deny the nature of the educational process as deny the educational character of the political act.”

Educational reform in Angola, which has been implemented since 2002, was also marked in Vitor Barbosa’s speech. Before the reform only the first series, the first to fourth one, had only one teacher for all subjects. Currently, fifth and sixth series is also the responsibility of a single teacher, which was a source of criticism by one of the listeners. The representant of the Angolan Network of Civil Society of Education for All stressed the importance of having dialogue permanently between all involved and interested in education. In his view, the problem is not in Angola, but in learning how to teach.

Among other points, finally, Vítor Barbosa spoke of the need for greater participation of women in education, not only in unions, but in their various fields and quoted Nelson Mandela, stating that education is a weapon to make the world more worthy, fairer. It is not a tool to make a citizens superiors to each other, but perhaps more responsible. Citizens that communicate constantly with each other to build educational reforms that include everyone.

More information about the interview can be found in:

http://www.voaportugues.com/content/angola-fala-so-bilhete-de-identidade-vitor-barbosa/1839784.html – “Angola Fala Só: Vitor Barbosa card of identity ”

Radio: http://www.voaportugues.com/audio/audio/371372.html

(Paulo Freire, complaint, announcement, prophecy, dream and utopia – The book of prophecy. Brazil in the third millennium)

In Morro Vermelho district, Caeté city, Minas Gerais, José Pereira Peixoto Filho, Professor Doctor Education Program of Graduation FAE / CBH / UEMG, conducted a survey that included the participation of eleven students from 35 to 70 years of Education for Youth and Adults people (EJA) and classroom teacher. The objective of the study by Carolina Rezende Souza, bacharel in Social Sciences by PUC Minas and Master in Education by SAF/HBC/UMEG, which lasted two years (2011-2013), was to understand how learners construct their materials and existential territories, associated with their different views of the world. It is important to consider that this research was funded by the Coordination for the Personnel Improvement of Higher Education (CAPES / INEP) and Centre for Rural Education, constituted by universities: UEMG, UFV and UFSJD.

Having popular education as a reference, the research aimed to identify different views of the world from the experience of students in the areas of rural community, which has 1200 inhabitants. The experience was based on creativity and authorship of the participating students. José Pereira Peixoto and Carolina Souza Rezende made pedagogical workshops inspired on Paulo Freire’s assumptions, with production and socialization of images, texts, drawings, artifacts and the ownership of objects brought by the learners themselves.

One of the pedagogical workshops made to image reading by students EJA

13 pedagogical workshops were performed (FIG. 01; FIG. 02) whose reports were able to identify the constitution of religious, school and family territories. The way the students see the territory of Caeté community was also evident. They realize it through their economic activities such as monoculture eucalyptus plantations and mining, as well as dialogues, oppositions between traditional and modern, as well as the perception of resistance on certain changes in rural areas, especially in rural family and the new powers granted to these spaces.

Therefore, the EJA learners speech revealed the limits faced in activities. However, there were also reports on the construction of knowledge with pleasure in the exercise of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, dialogue, creativity and authorship. And more than this, we can consider that the pedagogical workshops highlighted the importance of the implementation of initiatives to enable the recovery of young and adult workers as protagonists of their individual and collective trajectories.

One of the pedagogical workshops made for construction of cultural artifacts to express the EJA learners’s world views

(Paulo Freire, Genéve, 1971)

Between the 5th and 7th November, 2013, it happened in Nove de Julho University (UNINOVE), the IV International Seminar on Education which had the theme “Paulo Freire and Higher Education.”. The event counted on the participation of Jacques Choncol and Marcos Guerra, speakers of Magna Conference entitled “Agrarian Reform in Chile and Peasants Education”. José Eustaquio Romão and Moacir Gadotti, both members of the National Committee of the Project “Paulo Freire: Angicos, 50 years”, participated in the donation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed manuscript in Brazil. Teachers Antonio Teodoro and Manuel Tavarem launched Lusophone Magazine. Besides the participation of Carlos Alberto Torre (UCLA, USA), Ana Maria Saul from PUC-SP and Celso de Rui Beisiegel from USP who discoursed on the subject of popular education and the university.

At the opening ceremony in the auditorium from Campus Memorial, the “return” of the manuscripts of the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, written by Paulo Freire during the time he was exiled in Chile, was performed. They were in possession of Choncol, ex-minister of agriculture from Chile, to whom Freire had confided his work. “I would like you to receive these manuscripts of a book that may not be worth it, but it embodies the profound belief that I have in men, as a simple tribute to whom I greatly admire and cherish,” wrote Paulo Freire to Choncol and his wife, Maria Edy.

In an interview with TV Giro, from UNINOVE University, Choncol talked about the path taken by manuscripts until they reach Brazil, “When there was the military coup in Chile, the manuscript was in my house, the militaries came in, but they did not give importance to it. My mother, afterwards, recovered it and sent it to France, where I stayed in exile for many years (…). After I returned to Chile and I took it with me. Now I bring it here, to Brazil, where it deserves to be, (…) in order to be a tribute to whom he (Paulo Freire) was and what he meant to so many people. “

Manuscripts, as said by Paulo Freire Institute president of honour, Moacir Gadotti, represent an innovation of the author references, with drawings and unpublished notes. They also represent an educator’s dream, to review the scriptures that came out of his hands in 1968. Personal friend of Paulo Freire, Gadotti tells that the educator was concerned about the possibility of his book be confiscated by the militaries. So, before he gave it to Choncol, he typed the manuscript and made several copies.

Jacques Choncol gives the manuscripts of the book “Pedagogy of the Opressed” to Lutgardes Freire, Paulo Freire’s youngest son, in the IV International Seminar on Education.

In “IV International Seminar on Education” was also held the last ceremony to commemorate 50 years of experience developed by Paulo Freire in Angicos. Started on January 18, 1963, the experience has put in place a method of literacy for youth and adults people different of commonly used to teach children. Among the 380 students who started the course, 300 participated in the final ceremony of diplomas. They were literate. From then it has consolidated the “Paulo Freire method”.

The handing-over ceremony of the manuscripts to Brazil was coordinated by the National Committee of the Project “Paulo Freire: Angicos, 50 years”. “Today is a special day for all freirean people, especially for us brazilians. The original manuscripts of Pedagogy of the Oppressed are reaching Brazil for the first time.” said prof. Gadotti. This is one of the most sold books around the world, translated into about 25 languages, written by the one chosen to be the patron of the Brazilian education.

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed manuscripts were donated to the Ministry of Culture in February 2014. The minister Marta Suplicy received them at a hearing, in her office, directly from the rector of Nove de Julho University, Eduardo Storópoli, and its director of graduate Jose Romão. Finally, the document will be forwarded to the National Library, where it will be next to the greatest works in the history of the Brazil Foundation.