1921-
Educational Philosopher

Militant Literacy.

Paulo Freire came to the United States as a highly controversial educator from Latin America, best-known for his development of methodology for teaching reading to illiterate peasants. Born in Brazil, Freire was imprisoned there in 1964 when a military junta, which objected in the strongest possible terms to Freire's teaching of Brazilian peasants, seized control of the country. Upon release he was urged to leave the country, and he did so, working for five years in Chile developing adult-literacy programs. He came to the United States as a fellow of the Center for Study of Development and Social Change at Harvard, where his theories were welcomed, especially in the changing political climate of the early 1970s.

Freire's Philosophy.

Freire believes that becoming literate involves far more than learning to decode the written representations of a sound system; that it is, instead, truly...