PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED – A GENEROUS AND HOPEFUL LEGACY

Abstract

This article has as its main goal to reflect on the contribution and the present situation, for the Brazilian education, of the classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed from Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (1921-1997). With Pedagogy of the Oppressed Freire does a fundamental intellectual exercise: he went from the search of understanding the living reality to building the dreamed reality. He synthesized this exercise by stating that the reality is not settled, that it is a state of the moment. Once again, the sense of present time of Pedagogy of the Oppressed sounds as a calling to all of those who did not resign themselves to the injustices and the “meanness” of great part of the Brazilian elite. Freire never let himself to be put off and he bet on the hope as a revolutionary and freeing form of strength. The hope on Freire is not an empty hope. It is a commitment with the history lived by the Brazilian people. This hope is based on the belief that men and women are not complete beings, and so they are in permanent transformation of themselves and their realities. To Freire, the history is a non-ending construction.This is one of the fundamental differences between a “banking” education and a freeing and problematizing education. While the first one seeks for settling and repetition, the second one seeks for reflection, action, problematization of difficulties, overcoming barriers set by a certain reality. The overcoming of these barriers is the first step to overcoming the limits and realization of the “unprecedented-viable”, which Freire proposes.