Education, Literacy, and Humanization: Exploring the Work of Paulo Freire (Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series)

The author adopts a holistic approach in exploring the ontological, epistemological, ethical, and pedagogical dimensions of Paulo Freire's thought. The book discusses Freire's approach to adult literacy education and investigates the political, dialogical, and critical aspects to the multidimensional word in Freirean theory. The author outlines and assesses a number of key critiques of Freire's modernism, concentrating in particular on questions pertaining to the problem of pedagogical intervention. He responds at some length to C.A. Bowers, one of Freire's most important and persistent critics, and finds fault with behaviorist, stage-based accounts of consciousness raising. The Freirean concept of conscientization is reinterpreted in light of the postmodern notion of multiple subjectivities. From this book, Freire emerges as a complex educational figure: a thinker and teacher deeply committed to the universalist ideal of humanization, yet also wary of some of the exaggerated certainties of modernism. His work, for all its flaws and contradictions, remains highly influential and stands opposed to technicist and neoliberal tendencies in recent educational reform initiatives. Preliminaries......Page 1 Contents......Page 7 Acknowledgments......Page 13 Introduction......Page 15 1 Reading Freire......Page 37 2 Knowledge, Dialogue, and Humanization: Exploring Freire’s Philosophy......Page 49 3 Ethics, Politics, and Pedagogy: Freire on Liberating Education......Page 67 4 Freirean Adult Literacy Education......Page 89 5 Extending Literate Horizons: Freire and the Multidimensional Word......Page 101 6 Critiques of Freire’s Modernism......Page 111 7 Defending Freirean Intervention......Page 133 8 Rethinking Conscientization......Page 151 Bibliography......Page 171 Index......Page 183 A critical introduction to the work of Paulo Friere. The author adopts a holistic approach in exploring the ontological, epistemological, ethical and pedagogical dimensions of Freire's thought, and discusses his approach to adult literacy education. When Paulo Freire's name is mentioned, reference to his classic work-Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972a)-almost invariably follows.