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Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage

Book by Paulo Freire · 26 quotes · Teaching, Educational, Literature

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

“Coherently democratic authority carries the conviction that true discipline does not exist in the muteness of those who have been silenced but in the stirrings of those who have been challenged, in the doubt of those who have been prodded, and in the hopes of those who have been awakened.”

DoeHas BeensDoubtDisciplineAuthorityDemocraticConvictionCarrieAwakenedStirring
Book:Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage
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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.”

ArtPhilosophyWould BeLiteratureProcessChallengesEffortAcceptingPracticeKnowingTeacherTeachingStudentsConsciousArt IsOvercomingConvictionEducationalLimitationSensitive
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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.”

MayPersonsSelfMatterPhilosophyLiteratureMy OwnPositionImportanceAssumingEducationalSuperiorityPostureIncompetentDisdainPuffSelf-importance
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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
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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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“If I am a pure product of genetic, cultural, or class determination, I have no responsibility for my action in the world and, therefore, it is not possible for me to speak of ethics. Of course, this assumption of responsibility does not mean that we are not conditioned genetically, culturally, and socially. It means that we know ourselves to be conditioned but not determined.”

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“The experience that makes possible the “breakthrough” is a “collective” experience. However, usually someone or another will, individually, put forward and explicate a new perception of this social reality. One of the fundamental tasks of the educator who is open-minded is to be attentive and sensitive to the way a given social group reads and re-reads its reality, so as to be able to stimulate progressively a generalized comprehension of this new reality.”

AwakeningSocialismProgressive EducationCollective Liberation
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“One of the most objectionable errors of political militants, especially those of the messianically authoritarian kind, has always been a total ignorance of grassroots comprehension of the world. Seeing themselves as bearers of the “truth” that no one can refuse, they regard their sublime task as one not of proposing some truth for consideration but of imposing it without question.”

AuthoritarianismTrumpismAntifaMake America Great AgainFacismChristofacismFacist
Book:Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage
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