The critical power of Freire’s work

Author: Licínio C. Lima
University of Minho Institute of Education, Portugal

Edition: Volume 61, Number 3, November 2021

Introduction: Paulo Freire spent over ten years in exile from his native country. His letters are full of reflections and advice to modern readers and were a way to share his ideas about the unity between theory and practice. This is why we have invited readers to contribute ‘letters to a teacher’: not to emulate one of Freire’s last publications, Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, but to help bring his thinking to life.

In the second missive, ‘The critical power of Freire’s work’, Licínio Lima, the well-known Portuguese Freirean, addresses teacher educators and reflects on why Freire’s legacy remains current, namely that education is not ‘valueneutral’. Licínio argues with passion that we need a critique of ‘traditional, bureaucratic, dehumanised education that reproduces social inequalities’. The author reminds us that Freire’s work is also more than this. It is about alternatives ‘… and a world of possibilities for transformation’. This is a plea to see Freire’s work as full of doubts and questions, encouraging debate and a critical understanding of education. Licínio concludes with a reminder of the violence and oppression Freire would have fought against in the new environment of, ‘… physical and symbolic violence, restrictions on freedom and democracy, environmental disaster … access to vaccines and oxygen by the current ‘ragged from the world’…’

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 61:3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.