Paulu Freyre Brazilian educational psychologist. Date of Birth: 19.09.1921 Country: Brazil

Biography of Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire was a Brazilian psychologist and educator, as well as a theorist of pedagogy. In 1961, Freire was appointed as the director of the Department of Cultural Development at the University of Recife. In 1962, he had the opportunity to apply his theory by teaching 300 sugar plantation workers how to read and write in just 45 days. Following this success, the Brazilian government approved the creation of thousands of similar cultural circles throughout the country. However, in 1964, after a military coup, the dictatorship banned their activities. Freire was arrested and imprisoned for 70 days on charges of being a "traitor". After being expelled and briefly staying in Bolivia, Freire worked for five years in Chile for the government and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In 1967, Freire published his first book, "Education as the Practice of Freedom", followed by his most famous work, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", first published in Portugal in 1968. Paulo Freire worked in the field of popular education and engaged with the philosophy of education, which allowed him to combine not only classical approaches from Plato but also contemporary Marxist critique and theories of anti-colonial struggle. "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" can be seen as a development or response to Franz Fanon's book "The Wretched of the Earth", emphasizing the need to provide indigenous populations with an education that is both modern (instead of traditional, patriarchal) and anti-colonial (rather than simply imposing the culture of colonizers).