Education for Critical Consciousness

Here for the first time in English are two major studies on ‘Education As The Practice Of Freedom’ and ‘Extension Or Communication’. These were developed as the result of Freire’s efforts in the field of adult literacy in Brazil and his studies of the practice of agricultural extension in Chile; but they extend in reference to all social ‘helping’ relationships. Paulo Freire (1921-97) was an educationalist based in Brazil and became the most influential writer and thinker on education in the late twentieth century. His seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed is widly admired. Education for Critical Consciousness is the main statement of Freire’s revolutionary method of education. It takes the life situation of the learner as its starting point and the raising of consciousness and the overcoming of obstacles as its goals. For Freire, man’s striving for his own humanity requires the changing of structures which dehumanise both the oppressor and the oppressed, rather than therapy.