Paulo Freire Biography

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a professor and philosopher known for his work with adult illiterates and for promoting critical pedagogy, a theory and philosophy of education. He believed that each student has a way of thinking critically and is not just a passive recipient of knowledge or education from a teacher. He studied the relationship between teaching and learning and endorsed that the teacher should help students in developing freedom of thought that would enable them to use their knowledge to take constructive action. Freire grew up in poverty and hunger during the Great Depression of the 1930s and this explained his concerns about helping the poor. Poverty and related difficulties made him lag behind in social development and his ability to learn was severely diminished due to constant hunger and malnourishment. Eventually when his misfortunes ended and he got the opportunity to seek out a better life for himself, he decided that he wanted to contribute towards helping the poor. He became an educator and started working with the illiterate poor. He developed his own educational theories and taught hundreds of poor workers to read and write in just 45 days. He is the author of the book ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ which is one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement.