Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy and Popular Education are two similar forms of radical education that came out of the writing and action of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal. Working in Brazil in the 1960’s, high rates of poverty and illiteracy provoked them to develop alternate methods of education that reached out specifically to the peasant class. These techniques have since been adopted around the world for a variety of purposes. This workshop will be an opportunity us to introduce these methods to the AFU.

We will discuss the background of this movement and more specifically, the ideas introduced in Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Freire . The aim of this workshop is to open up a dialogue about these ideas. We will work with participants to form activities that help us understand the principles which these methods are based on. Participants are encouraged to read the texts ahead of time though it is by no means required. Nor is it necessary to have any knowledge on this subject. What is necessary is a willingness to participate and take ownership of the process which we will be entering together.

“Since dialogue is the encounter in which the united reflection and action of the dialoguers are addressed to the world which is to be transformed and humanized, this dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person’s ‘depositing’ ideas in another, not can it become a simple exchange of ideas to be ‘consumed’ by the discussants … Dialogue further requires an intense faith in humankind, faith in their power to make and remake, to create and re-create, faith in their vocation to be more fully human.”

-Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Based on the Following Readings:

Primary

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Friere

Secondary

Theater of the Oppressed, Augusto Baol

Paulo Friere: A Critical Encounter, Peter McLaren^?