Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage - Critical Perspectives Series: A Book Series Dedicated to Paulo Freire (Paperback)

Pedagogy of Freedom, Paulo Freire’s last will and testament, is his best book since Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Pedagogy of Freedom is a stirring culmination of Paulo Freire’s life work. It is in no way a conclusion or a summation: it is a text that urges its readers to become, to reach towards still untapped possibility. The themes of Freire’s earlier writing are extended here into thoughtful explorations of ethics and democracy and the ways in which they may release a sense of agency in the long exploited and cruelly silenced. Moreover, he has new things to say about ideology and freedom in a world marked by a threatening 'globalization' and an unprecedented manipulation by media. As before, he speaks of ‘passion,’ ‘love,’ and ‘caring;’ and, each time he does so, it is as if his hand grasps each one of our shoulders, urging us on and on. Braiding bold vision with precision, Freire, in his brilliance, allows us to imagine a tomorrow of democracy and freedom. Insisting on the 'incompleteness' of us all and on a 'dreamer’s right to dream,' Pedagogy of Freedom reminds us that our work is never done; that change is always possible, always essential, always unfinished. With Pedagogy of Freedom, Paulo Freire enriches the dialogical perspectives with a call for universal ethics that establishes a better foundation for education in the next century. At the threshold of the twenty-first century, we face the need to learn a new and more communicative way of constructing educational theory. With Pedagogy of Freedom, Freire contributes a unique guide to such a mission. . . . While social sciences are witnessing the revival of the idea of deliberative democracy (Elster, 1988), as well as the possibility of transforming social positions through dialogue (Giddens, 1994), we now have a book that discusses how to develop such dialogic democracy in education. In Pedagogy of Freedom, Freire defends a universal human ethic that extends not only to schools but also to teachers' training. This book is a repository of Freire's wisdom, the wisdom that informs his philosophy of education and his educational approach. . . . I would recommend this one as very important. Pedagogy of Freedom is almost an elegy. In looping around themes that have run through his work, Freire's book is a reminder of his fundamentally optimistic vision of the radical possibilities for education. Paulo Freire is one of the ideological giants. . . . In this book, Freire remains passionately idealistic and inspirational, without denying the complexity of the work or the difficulty of creating real change. It is one of the rare tomes to which one can return again and again...