Pedagogy Of The Oppressed

Preface

These pages, which introduce Pedagogy of the Oppressed, result from my observations during six years of political exile, observations which have enriched those previously afforded by my educational activities in Brazil

I have encountered, both in training courses that analyse the role of conscientização and in actual experimentation with a truly liberating education, the “fear of freedom” discussed in the first chapter of this book. Not infrequently, training course participants call attention to “the danger of conscientização” in a way that reveals their own fear of freedom. Critical consciousness, they say, is anarchic. Others add that critical consciousness may lead to disorder. Some, however, confess: Why deny it? I was afraid of freedom. I am no longer afraid!

In one of these discussions, the group was debating whether the conacientização of men and women to a specific situation of injustice might not lead them to “destructive fanaticism” or to a “sensation of total collapse of their world In the midst of the argument, a person who previously had been a factory worker for many years spoke out: “Perhaps I am the only one here of working-class origin. I can’t say that I’ve understood everything you’ve said just now, but I can say one thing- when I began this course I was naïve, and when I found out how naïve I was, I started to get critical. But this discovery hasn’t made me a fanatic, and I don’t feel any collapse either.”

1. The term concientização refers to learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of mality. See chapter 3-Translator’s note