Freire - Pedagogy in process: the letters to Guinea-Bissau

Pedagogy in Process

TITLES IN THE BLOOMSBURY REVELATIONS SERIES

The Sexual Politics of Meat , Carol J. Adams

Aesthetic Theory , Theodor W. Adorno

The Oresteia , Aeschylus

Being and Event , Alain Badiou

Infinite Thought , Alain Badiou

Theoretical Writings , Alain Badiou

On Religion , Karl Barth

The Language of Fashion , Roland Barthes

The Intelligence of Evil , Jean Baudrillard

Key Writings , Henri Bergson

I and Thou , Martin Buber

The Tomb of Tutankhamun: Volumes 13 , Howard Carter

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: Volumes IIV , Sir Winston S. Churchill

Never Give In!, Sir Winston S. Churchill

The Boer War, Sir Winston S. Churchill

The Second World War , Sir Winston S. Churchill

The World Crisis: Volumes IV , Sir Winston S. Churchill

In Defence of Politics , Bernard Crick

Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy , Manuel DeLanda

Cinema I , Gilles Deleuze

Cinema II , Gilles Deleuze

Difference and Repetition , Gilles Deleuze

Logic of Sense , Gilles Deleuze

A Thousand Plateaus , Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari

Anti-Oedipus , Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari

Dissemination, Jacques Derrida

Origins of Analytical Philosophy , Michael Dummett

Taking Rights Seriously , Ronald Dworkin

Discourse on Free Will , Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther

The Theatre of the Absurd , Martin Esslin

Education for Critical Consciousness , Paulo Freire

Pedagogy of Hope , Paulo Freire

Marxs Concept of Man , Erich Fromm

To Have or To Be? , Erich Fromm

Truth and Method , Hans Georg Gadamer

All Men Are Brothers , Mohandas K. Gandhi

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Ren Girard

Violence and the Sacred , Ren Girard

Among the Dead Cities , A.C. Grayling

Towards the Light , A.C. Grayling

The Three Ecologies , Flix Guattari

Mindfulness, Martin Heidegger

The Essence of Truth , Martin Heidegger

The Odyssey , Homer

Eclipse of Reason , Max Horkheimer

The Nazi Dictatorship, Ian Kershaw

Language of the Third Reich , Victor Klemperer

Everyday Life in the Modern World, Henri Lefebvre

Rhythmanalysis , Henri Lefebvre

The Modes of Modern Writing , David Lodge

Libidinal Economy , Jean-Franois Lyotard

After Virtue , Alasdair MacIntyre

Time for Revolution , Antonio Negri

Apologia Pro Vita Sua , John Henry Newman

Film Fables, Jacques Rancire

The Politics of Aesthetics , Jacques Rancire

Course in General Linguistics , Ferdinand de Saussure

Understanding Music, Roger Scruton

An Actor Prepares , Constantin Stanislavski

Building A Character , Constantin Stanislavski

Creating A Role , Constantin Stanislavski

States and Markets , Susan Strange

What is Art?, Leo Tolstoy

Interrogating the Real , Slavoj iek

The Universal Exception , Slavoj iek

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Pedagogy in Process

The Letters to Guinea-Bissau

Paulo Freire

Translated by Carman St. John Hunter

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Contents

It will come as no surprise to North American readersnot those, at least, who have read the earlier work of Paulo Freireto learn that he has not gone into exile in Geneva in order to escape from history.

On the contrary, as these letters and the introductory essay will quite eloquently attest, Freire is too much a man of praxis to rest very long upon nostalgia for the past, nor even upon the passionate recollection of that past.

It is Fidel Castro who said that the duty of a revolutionary is to make the revolution. If Freires efforts in Brazil and Chile have been arrested, in the short run, by the not-so-subtle operations of the C.I.A., or of those governments imposed upon the people of both nations by domestic rulers who conduct their business in collaboration with the North American and European corporations, Freire himself is unwilling to sit still within an office in Geneva, nor to perform on orders for a liberal audience in San Francisco or New Delhi. Instead, he is industriously at work in building that revolution, made of words that shape the world, in several newborn African nations at this hour.

It would be tempting here to speak again about the basic themesthe generative words and codificationsof Freires pedagogic work among (and with) the desperately poor peasants of Brazil. It would be interesting, also, to attempt to summarize those themes as they are stated once again within the essay that precedes the letters which comprise most of the present book. To do this, however, is to re-run once again the subject-matter of his previous work. It seems far more important, and more human in this case, to speak of these beautiful letters in themselves.

The book, for which these letters provide both core and rationale, will not only broaden the already substantial audience for Freires work. It will also clarify his views, and humanize the man himself, for those who still regard him as an ominous or intimidating person, rather than as the very gentle and, at all times, open and affectionate human being that both his friends and pupils know so well.

Apart from all else, the book provides the best, most idiomatic English version of his writing to this date. More important, it reveals himin the company of Elzain a series of specific situations and direct, emotional relationships with other educators. Thus, not only the translation, but the letter-genre in itself, gives English-speaking readers, at long last, a direct sense of the character of Paulo Freire: a character full of warmth, of humble attitude and militant fervor, all in a single man and oftentimes expressed within a single word or phrase.

It is not surprising that the human side of Paulo Freire has, up to this time, gone largely unperceived. The format of his earlier writings, that of the didactic essay, denies the exposition of those very characteristics which most faithfully reflect the goals and nature of the man. The conversational tone made possible by an exchange of correspondence provides, for the first time, an appropriate literary metaphor for the man who has made dialogue almost a synonym for education.

Freire gives this collection of letters an appropriate title: Pedagogy in Process. It is an ideal title for a book that records, by measured and unhurried stages, the evolution of a pedagogic partnership between Freire (and his colleagues at the World Council of Churches), on the one hand, and the educators of the new-born nation, Guinea-Bissau, on the other. Their common purpose is to develop a literacy program for a newly liberated people.

The correspondence begins as a one-to-one exchange between Freire, writing from Geneva, and Mario Cabral of Guinea-Bissau. Soon, however, the correspondence broadens out to include the other members of the teammembers both in Africa and in Geneva. In spite of the foreshortened time-span of the letters (January, 1975 to spring of 1976), the repercussions of the dialogueas noted in a recent and nostalgic postscriptextend into 1977 and beyond. They also extend beyond one nations borders, leading to collective literacy efforts planned by several of the new nations of Africaall sharing the heritage of many centuries of European domination.

Those who wonder what an exiled educator from Brazil, now resident in Switzerland, might have in common with the people of a land like Guinea-Bissau, will, no doubt, settle first upon the simple fact of a shared heritage of servitude, as stated just above. The deeper bond, however, lies in Freires revolutionary posture, one that is shared by his co-workers and in this case, correspondents, within Guinea-Bissau. The education of an oppressed and struggling people, as he insists at several points, must, from the first, be both political and non-neutralor it never can succeed.