Brazil imprisoned him for teaching peasants to read.
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was born on September 19, 1921, in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, one of the poorest states in northeastern Brazil. His family fell into poverty during the Great Depression, and the experience of childhood hunger shaped his understanding of how economic deprivation suppresses intellectual development.1
In the early 1960s, Freire developed a literacy method grounded in dialogue rather than instruction. He rejected what he called the "banking model" of education, in which a teacher deposits information into passive students. In its place, he proposed a model where teacher and student learn together through conversation about the conditions of their lives.2 In 1963, the Brazilian government appointed him director of the National Literacy Program. His methods produced results so rapidly that the military government that seized power in 1964 considered mass literacy a threat.
Freire was imprisoned for 70 days and then exiled. He spent five years in Chile, where he wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in Spanish in 1968 and in English in 1970.3 The book argued that education is never politically neutral, that it either reinforces existing power structures or equips people to question them. More than a million copies have been sold worldwide, and it is the third most cited book in the social sciences.4
Freire returned to Brazil in 1980, joined the Workers' Party, and served as Secretary of Education for São Paulo after the party won municipal elections in 1988. He died on May 2, 1997.5 His concept of conscientização, the development of critical awareness as a precondition for action, influenced literacy movements, liberation theology, and postcolonial education across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.