Paulo Freire

1. Thought and Philosophy

2. Career path

3. Achievements

4. has perfected a method for teaching illiterates

5. who in learning to read and write,

6. Paulo Freire's thought represents the, response of a creative mind and sensitive conscience to the extraordinary misery and suffering of the oppressed around him.

7. His early sharing of the life of the poor also led him to the discovery of what he describes as the "culture of silence" of the dispossessed.

8. Confronted by this problem in a very existential way, Freire turned his attention to the field of education and began to work on it.

9. Freire went to Chile, where he spent five years working with UNESCO and the Chilean Institute for Agrarian Reform in programs of adult education.

10. Acted as a consultant at Harvard University's School of Education

11. Worked in close association with a number of groups engaged in new educational experiments in rural and urban areas

12. presently serving as Special Consultant to the Office of Education of the World Council of Churches in Geneva

13. that mans ontological vocation (as he calls it) is to be a Subject who acts upon and transforms his world, and in so doing moves toward ever new possibilities of fuller and richer life individually and collectively.

14. every human being, no matter how "ignorant" or submerged in the "culture of silence" he or she may be, is capable of looking critically at the world in a dialogical encounter with others.

15. People educate each other through the mediation of the world

16. Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of most of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system. To the degree that this happens, we are also becoming submerged in a new "culture of silence."