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Paulo Freire

The Brazilian Theatre Tradition Behind Britain’s Green Surge

July 29, 2026 Hugo Harvey, The Canary. , , ,
The ideas behind Britain’s Green surge began in a Brazilian jail. In the 1970s, Augusto Boal invented a technique he named Theatre of the Oppressed. It sought to awaken audiences by making them active participants, turning spectators into “spect-actors.” Boal had drawn the idea from educator Paulo Freire, whose Pedagogy of the Oppressed argued that conventional education was a tool of domination, a “banking” model where teachers deposited facts into passive students. Jailed by Brazil’s military junta in 1964 and driven into exile, Freire proposed instead that teacher and student examine the world together, aiming at conscientização, or critical consciousness.

The Spirit Of Chavismo: Why Trump Must Not Invade Venezuela

December 1, 2025 Peter McLaren, LA Progressive. , , ,
In his excellent and provocative article, Roger D. Harris posed the following question in a recent edition of LA Progressive: Will the U.S. Attack Venezuela? His essay served as a warning, a fiery herald no eye could ignore. I do not rise to echo that caution across the void; I come to bear witness, a sentinel tracing its contours through time. I write from the memory of a land that invited me to bring a Freirean-style pedagogy to various sectors of the country, a los bosques, campos, tierras de cultivo y barrios de Venezuela.

Pedagogy And Class Power: Reclaiming Freire In An Age Of Reaction

June 15, 2025 Joe Coleman, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , ,
In the early decades of the twenty-first century, education has become a frontline in the ideological struggle over the future of global capitalism. The coordinated assault on teachers, curriculum, and institutions of public learning is not an isolated culture war but a structural feature of neoliberal governance. In this context, the pedagogical philosophy of Paulo Freire demands renewed attention—not as an abstract theory of “engaged learning,” but as a revolutionary praxis situated in a broader Marxist tradition of class struggle.¹ Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in 1970, emerged not from elite seminar rooms but from literacy campaigns among Brazil’s dispossessed.

Paulo Freire At 100

September 20, 2021 Peter Mclaren, Tribune Magazine. , , ,
Today marks the centennial anniversary of the birth of Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire. Most widely known for his magisterial Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire’s work continues to be a lodestar for teachers working in poverty-stricken communities across the globe, and for just about anyone who’s searching for a sense of justice in an unjust world. Every critically-minded educator has at some point used Freire in their teaching ––either to gain some insight into the upside-down world of the oppressed, or as the inspiration that led them to view teaching as a way to overturn society’s asymmetries of power and privilege. Freire’s literacy programmes for empowering peasants are now used in countries all over the globe, and Pedagogy of the Oppressed is currently the third most cited work in the social sciences, and first in the field of education.

How Amilcar Cabral Shaped Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy

September 1, 2021 Curry Mallott, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Amílcar L Cabral was born 12 September 1924 in Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, one of Portugal’s African colonies. He was murdered on 20 January 1973 by fascist Portuguese assassins just months before the national liberation movement, in which he played a central role, won the independence of Guinea-Bissau. Cabral and the other leaders of the movement understood that they were fighting in a larger anticolonial struggle and global class war and, as such, that their immediate enemies were not only the colonial governments of particular countries, but Portuguese colonialism in general. For 500 years, Portuguese colonialism was built upon the slave trade and the systematic pillaging of its African colonies: Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Angola and Cape Verde.

Paulo Freire’s Brazil: ‘Return To Grassroots Popular Education’

April 22, 2021 Paolo Vittorio, Il Manifesto. , , ,
In my case, I spent four years in prison, two with political prisoners and two with ordinary prisoners. With the common prisoners, we experimented with popular education through theater, reading circles, crafts and painting. At the time, we were already inspired by the methodology devised by Paulo Freire. Next September will mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, and it is only right to recall how popular education, which he introduced, still has the potential to make the oppressed into social and political protagonists. I believe that it is also thanks to Paulo Freire that, in an elitist country like Brazil, where bankers are even richer than European ones, a metalworker trade unionist like Lula became president of the Republic, elected for two terms.
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