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Paulo Freire Quotes

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Famous Paulo Freire Quotes

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”

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Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
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“Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - conditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them.”

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Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
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“Libertarian action must recognize this dependence as a weak point and must attempt through reflection and action to transform it into independence. However, not even the best-intentioned leadership can bestow independence as a gift. The liberation of the oppressed is a liberation of women and men, not things. Accordingly, while no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he liberated by others. Liberation, a human phenomenon, cannot be achieved by semihumans. Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them.”

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Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
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“some may think that to affirm dialogue—the encounter of women and men in the world in order to transform the world—is naively and subjectively idealistic. there is nothing, however, more real or concrete than people in the world and with the world, than humans with other humans.”

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Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
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“One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.”

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Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
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“An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating “blah.” It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action.”

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Author:Paulo Freire
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“True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.”

WorldNeedsHumansHandsLyingFightingIndividualCausesCharityStriveGenerosityRejectsFearfulTremblingPedagogyConstrainSupplicationHuman HandsPedagogy Of The OppressedCharity And GenerosityTrue GenerosityTrembling Hands
Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
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“The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.”

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Book:We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change
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“Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed”

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Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
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“The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression. As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority.”

IfsChildrenPhilosophyHomeLiteratureSocialParentConditionsAuthorityIncreaseRelationStructureClimateEducationalObjectivesOppressionPenetrateInfancyDominatingChildren And ParentsParent ChildSocial StructureParent Child Relationship
Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
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“This is the road I have tried to follow as a teacher: living my convictions; being open to the process of knowing and being sensitive to the experience of teaching as an art; being pushed forward by the challenges that prevent me from bureaucratizing my practice; accepting my limitations, yet always conscious of the necessary effort to overcome them and aware that I cannot hide them because to do so would be a failure to respect both my students and myself as a teacher.”

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Book:Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage
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“No matter how much someone may irritate me, I have no right to puff myself up with my own self-importance so as to declare that person to be absolutely incompetent, assuming a posture of disdain from my own position of false superiority.”

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Book:Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage
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“It is impossible to talk of respect for students for the dignity that is in the process of coming to be, for the identities that are in the process of construction, without taking into consideration the conditions in which they are living and the importance of the knowledge derived from life experience, which they bring with them to school. I can in no way underestimate such knowledge. Or what is worse, ridicule it.”

WayI CanPhilosophySchoolLiteratureProcessImpossibleConditionsIdentityStudentsDignityImportanceEducationalConsiderationConstructionLife ExperienceUnderestimateRidicule
Book:Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage
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“Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.”

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Author:Paulo Freire
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“Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students.”

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Book:Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage
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