Paulo Freire : a global and cosmopolitan educator. The voice of the Latin American biographer

Abstract

Paulo Freire is perhaps the best-known educator in the world and his work has inspired a generation of progressive teachers and even socialist educational projects. Freire’s principle of education as a cultural action, his conceptualization of concientização––the process of concientization or consciousness raising––and his approach to adult literacy education have been adopted and adapted by many educational initiatives in which in which the learning activity takes into account socio-political context or significant situations in which it takes place. But what is the political origin of Freire's theory and practice? What is the political content of his so-called method? How is it that Freire's ideas have has such a lasting impacting spreading over decades and across the globe? This text attempts to answer these questions. I investigate the development of Freire from the beginning of his work in Brazil and Chile, through efforts to apply his method in different cultural environments of Africa as well as his return to Brazil in the 80s and the beginning of the 90s until his untimely death.