Paulo Freire (1921-1997) What Makes

Paulo Freire (1921-1997)

What makes his ideas so influential?

Paulo Freire has had a significant contribution in the educational field and his ideas are mainly so influential because of the innovative approach they proposed and for the added value these brought in areas such as educational practice in general and informal and popular education in particular.

Among some of the important aspects that have made his ideas so influential, one can emphasize the emphasis not only on dialogue, but on dialogue and communication as an intrinsic, fundamental part of informal education. The respective format of dialogue and communication also encouraged a managed collaboration between the educator and the educatee, rather than a simple formal, top-down process from one to the other. At the same time, his approach encouraged educators and those educated to merge any potential distance between them and successfully overcome the existence of a division between them.

On the other hand, his approaches were also influential in terms of education for those 'oppressed', including for that category of individual with less access to information and education. In my opinion, it was exactly his proposal for this informal approach that involved communication and dialogue that made education accessible for these categories of individuals.

Further more, education began to be addressed as an imbedded part of very day activities and the individual's life rather than an abstract, isolated notion. This made transition from theory to practice much easier for the educators as well, who now had the capacity to integrate theory with everyday experiences.

2.How relevant do you think his ideas are across the broad field of adult education?

The relevancy of his ideas across the broad field of adult education is given, first of all, by the diversity of his sources of inspiration and the way he successfully managed to combine Christian sources and metaphors from these sources, which a much larger framework of ideas that included Marxist or philosophical thought. Such a large area of inspiration could obviously translate into a very large area of applicability and, even above this, with the inclusion of a large category of both potential educators and educatees who could find these ideas compelling and worthwhile to apply in the education process.