Assignment 1B

Paulo Freire was born into a middle class family on September 19, 1921 in Recife, Brazil. He was not even ten years old when the Great Depression in 1929 impacted his way of life and thus, helped shaped his perspective on education. Freire attended Law School at the University of Recife's in 1943, he studied philosophy, with an emphasis on phenomenology and the psychology of language. In 1944 he married Elza Maia Costa de Oliveira, an educator as well, they had five children and worked together. 

Freire became the Director of the Department of Education and Culture of the Social Service in Pernambuco, the state which Recife is the capital in Brazil. He began to accept a non-orthodox form of what could be considered liberation theology, teaching illiterate people. During that time literacy was required to vote in Presidential elections. In 1961 he became the Director of Cultural Extension of Recife University. In 1962 Freire had his first opportunity for significant application of his theories, when he taught three hundred illiterate sugarcane workers how to read and write in forty-five days. The Brazilian government approved the creation of thousands of cultural circles across the country. In 1964 military coup put an end to the cultural circles, Freire was put in jail as a traitor for seventy days. 

In 1967 Freire published his first book, Education as the Practice of Freedom, then he published his second most well known book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, it was published in Portuguese, but not until 1974 it was published in Brazil because of a political feud between  a Christian Socialist and the successive authoritarian military dictatorship. Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published in Spanish and English while he was visiting professor at Harvard University in 1970. After his time in Massachusetts he moved to Switzerland, to work as a special educator advisor to the World Council of Churches. Afterwards, he was an advisor on the education reform in former Portuguese cultures in Africa, such as Guinea, Bissau and Mozambique. 

In 1979 his exile from Brazil was over and moved back in 1980. He became supervisor for Sao Paulo's adult literacy project from 1980 to 1986 in the Worker's Party. In 1986 Elza, his wife died. In 1988 Freire was elected Secretary of Education for Sao Paulo. He remarried Maria Araujo Freire who is also in education. Freire died of a heart failure May 2, 1997.

Sources: wikipedia.org 

http://infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pSyaZAWlr1l