EDUCATION FOR CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

'Freire combines a compassion for the wretched of the earth with an intellectual and practical confidence and personal humility... Most of all he has a vision of man.' Times Higher Educational Supplement 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 has sold almost 1 million copies. 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.