Discover all the Occupations Professor Paulo Freire (1921–1997), always in dialogue with his students, learned that it was necessary to listen and to work together; with great social sensitivity, he also understood, through them, that education is not separate from each person’s conditions and perspective of life. On this basis, he developed an educational practice couched in the universe of the learner and, at the same time, one that thinks and constructs the world. It was necessary not only to teach how to write “house” but also to defend the right for everyone to have one.
Equipped with a successful method for the teaching of literacy – put to the test in various experiments in the country, including in Angicos (RN), a city in which 300 people learned to read and write in just 40 hours – and with a philosophy marked by words such as freedom, indignation, hope, awareness, lovingness and autonomy, Paulo Freire created a way of thinking coupled with an attitude that became influential in Brazil and around the world, in the area of education and beyond it.
The Ocupação project’s current edition – held in this year that marks the 100th anniversary of the philosopher, writer and educator’s birth – presents an overview of his thought and practice while spotlighting the living potential it still holds. We follow the repercussion of his proposals – communicated in more than three dozen books – and tell about his life, from the shadow of a mango tree in Pernambuco to more than 30 countries, from his exile during Brazil’s dictatorship to worldwide veneration.
Ocupação Paulo Freire also presents a printed publication with interviews with various “non-followers” of the pedagogue, who always said that people should not follow but rather transform him. On this website you can find portions of the material shown in the exhibition, alongside other content available exclusively here.