Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The Big Oil Leak: The Secret Plan to Beat Hugo Chavez: VenezuelaAnalysis

The Big Oil Leak: The Secret Plan to Beat Hugo Chavez

November 21st 2007, by Aldo Vidali - Communication Evolution
Washington's Brain Society (W's.B.S.), a conservative think tank, inadvertently leaked to the press the secret plot that will render Hugo completely harmless. Many propagandistic schemes have been spawned by W's.B.S.'s cagey corporate executives, clever military strategists, and cunning politicians, but never a plot so brilliant and undefeatable as "Operation Crush Chavez."
Major elements of the CIA infiltrating the popular barrios of Caracas and cocktail parties of the oligarchy have returned to W's.B.S. with a frightening intelligence report on the activities of Hugo Chavez that could spell the doom of our free wheeling-and-dealing capitalist system. The good news is that after examining the report, a diabolical plan by W's.B.S. was approved by the DOD, State Department, the major oil cartels, and the White House that will outdo, squash, and vanquish all support and world admiration for Hugo Chavez.
Everyone at W's.B.S. planning meeting was agape, agog, and dumbfounded to learn that dastardly Chavez has persisted in launching his populist, liberal, and socialist acts of provocation against our neo-conservative free-for-all market created by the generous free world nations under the wise guidance of the U.S.
Chavez, through his sneaky oil company CITGO, has been giving large discounts on heating oil to poor households in the U.S. A slap in our fine oil industry's face! That evil Venezuelan company has committed $3.6 million to nine Bronx initiatives that foster community empowerment and clean-up of the urban environment. Can you see the nasty Chavez conspiracy? is the question W's.B.S. asks our government and the American people. By the winter of 2006-2007, Chavez's program doubled, delivering 100 million gallons to 1.2 million poor Americans, from Alaskan natives to Vermont citizens. CITGO expects to supply 110 million gallons to America's poor this winter. Isn't that awful? It's just to embarrass the superrich U.S. oil companies that receive meritorious subsidies while faithfully accepting Americans' financial sacrifice at the pump and concurrently refusing to pay abusive oil royalties owed to the American people who never lifted a finger to earn them.
According to W's.B.S., President Chavez is a terrible blackmailer! Imagine sharing Venezuela's oil wealth with his poor and spoiling our own people with unwanted welfare, which keeps our own poor from learning how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in the dead of winter. Nevermind! Here is how W's.B.S proposes to fix this evil do-gooder Chavez.
Politicos and big oil at W's.B.S. meeting agreed that this is outrageous. Chavez' generosity is only propaganda and peanuts thrown to "useless eaters," as Kissinger called the world's poor. "Operation Crush Chavez," with full approval from big oil, a bribed Congress, and the White House, will generously give 50 time as much, not just to a few peripheral low class neighborhoods, but to every state in the union. Get it?!!! When the American people discover that their own great oil companies are much more generous than Chavez and his socialist love-of-the-people nonsense, Chavez' popularity will sink and he'll learn a lesson in humility. Since he's putting his money where his mouth is, we'll outdo him 50 to 1!
According to W's.B.S., CITGO's nasty commie executives have been visiting needy people in the Bronx more often than any American corporate donor. How stupid can our business community be? We have to outdo these radicals. The commies have been asking community groups what kind of grants are needed, and based on what people wanted, awarded one for a child care cooperative that helps working mothers make a living. And the nerve of the nasty do-gooder and his Pollyanna socialists to celebrate the completion of the cooperative with locals over Venezuelan food — arepas and carne mechada — and Latin American music!
"We'll show them towel-head lovers," said W's.B.S.'s Chair, "that U.S. companies can do better than that. Our oil corporations will quadruple that celebration with millions of healthy MacBurgers, hotdogs, and Cokes, not just in the Bronx, but in every poor neighborhood in America and at every gas station. And we'll double it in Venezuela as well, to take the battle for hearts and minds to Chavez' shores, just as we did in Iraq. That'll embarrass Chavez and turn him green with envy. We know all kids love fast food, which is excellent for their health according to Chamber of Nonsense & Research financed by the fast food industries."
CITGO's winter oil program for the American people cost a paultry $80 million, which is about the same amount that America's largest publicly traded oil companies — with roughly 10 times the revenue — spent on charity in the United States in 2006. How inconveniently embarrassing. The Chair concluded: "We can do better for the American people because we have the means to counterattack Chavez once we decide to dip in our own deeper pockets."
Well, okay! "Operation Crush Chavez" intends to do much better! According to W's.B.S., American capitalists have got to appear less like Scrooges and more like Santas. They must throw an $800 million bone to the public beast and show the whole world that America's big oil and the Republican compassionate government are true Christians, just like Pat Robertson, except for his stupid suggestion to assassinate Hugo Chavez. (As BBC's investigative reporter Greg Palast has suggested, Pat Robertson, in his Christian goodwill, cannot separate Church and Hate).
We are pleased that our media is doing such a great job making Chavez look like a petty miser commie. We instructed corporate media to never publish important facts, like the fact that Chavez presided over an 18% reduction in infant mortality, or the fact that Venezuela enjoys a hearty 9.5% average annual economic growth rate, independent of oil revenue, or the fact that 9 out of 10 media outlets in Venezuela are private concerns, many of which are freely screaming opposition voices that routinely attack the Chavez government.
The things Hugo Chavez has been doing have made our petroleum industry executives very, very nervous. The Chavez-CITGO program is "designed to embarrass us," stated Larry Goldstein, president of the New York based Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, when it was launched in 2005. "[The Chavez-CITGO program] is not designed to help poor people," said that super rich executive. "Chávez is astute, clever, with a major political agenda, largely to get under our skin, and he does that everywhere and anywhere he can."
We don't want the world to ever again hear appalling facts about America's beggar class – its increasing homeless men, women, and children, often freezing to death in the winter for lack of heat. Unfortunately, as well policed as it is compared to the old Soviet media, U.S. media is still too loose, and the damned Internet is letting out too many disturbing facts. Control of the damned Net is our next goal. Our citizens must never get facts about capitalist oppression in the free world, but they do need protection from socialist and environmental propaganda and from do-gooders like Chavez!
Gary Farber, a very poor American who can't afford medicine for his very serious illness, offered some powerful suggestions to help America. On his blog, Amigdala.blogspot.com — which he manages to keep going thanks to small donations, even when he cannot afford to buy food — this brave, poverty-stricken intellectual had the patriotic instinct to help his country against Hugo Chavez by sparking the idea of organizing the poisonous "Operation Crush Chavez." He wrote:
Wanna know how you can really get back at the evil commie dictator Chavez for this propaganda coup? Really embarrass him and make him squirm and sweat? Get under his skin?
Up your charitable donations by a factor of twenty, no, thirty, and put the money largely in the form of long-term endowments and grants to organizations and programs in poor neighborhoods around America, and beat Chavez at his own game!
Make poor people love you! Think of the fantastic image improvement you'll have! Imagine how Chavez will be put in the dust!
That'll show that oppressive 'ol creepy dictator-y guy.
Upping your donations fifty times would be even better.
Do it because you hate Chavez so much. Use your hatred: it will make you stronger yet in the Dark Side.
I'm looking at you, Larry Goldstein. You'll serve your master well by doing this and you'll be rewarded. With that Gary will assuredly lift his fist in a commie salute using his extended middle finger.
W's.B.S. feels that the biggest challenge our government has with Chavez is how to put down Venezuela's constitutional achievements. Like the fact that it recognizes work at home is an economic activity contributing to social welfare and wealth. Consequently, mothers, as homemakers, are entitled to Social Security. Like Chavez' program called "Mothers of the Barrio" — one more evil communist trick! Of course, all the mothers among the vast majority of poor people love Hugo Chavez. How can we beat down mothers?!
On top of that kind of relief for the poor, the evil dictator has created free universal health care and free education, all the way to college. Try and take that away from them and tell them we're civilized! We need to double media misinformation or this commie do gooder will cook us out of our comfort zone. Too much truth is leaking out!
Our response must be one that will definitely crush Chavez. We must divert 400 billion dollars of military illegal aggression expenditures to give every American citizen free education and healthcare. Another great idea! We can save 50% of current medical costs by firing all bloodsucking, paper shuffling insurance companies. And another: we can intensively regulate the pharmaceutical Frankenstein industry and save many lives and countless billions. But, hold it! That's going to be hard to accomplish cause we already spend billions for campaign finance bribery. In fact, I'll probably get fired for writing this.
The money savings for our country will be so immense that we might even end up paying all our debts in a few years and then Chavez' socialist threat will vanish forever.
Imagine: in one single year we can bring Chavez to his knees, restore peace and prosperity to our country, and end terrorism by depriving all terrorist fools, both foreign and domestic, of any motivation for killing us. It's so simple. All we need to do is stop aggression, stop stealing others' resources, stop torture, end violations of international law, and restore justice. Now I know for sure that Washington will ask W's.B.S. to fire me and send me to Guantanamo for leaking this story.
Anyway, before they do…by pretending we are civilized, we'll show ourselves as worthy of respect as Hugo Chavez is…maybe even more, since we'll have to spent more money than he. But our profits will more than double, you can bet on that!
Source: Communication Evolution Blog
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Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

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Monday, November 19, 2007

Comment regarding: Assoc. of Raza Educators, Post-Conference Follow-up!!!

11-19-07 @10:03 PM ~ Gracias Hermano Ron ~ I pray that Raza Educators continue to grow as a powerful force in local, national and global forums that address and advocate a host of critical issues in these times of troubles, plagues and persecutions!
Much remains to be done. As always, the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Vanguard leadership is a critical factor at this point in our collective struggle. We have gone far yet so much more remains to e done, especially with ourselves and our ridding ourselves of the counter revolutionary character defects that we have inherited and been conditioned into from our general reactionary environment.
If we are to be free we will eventually have to stop thinking like the oppressor, stop thinking like asinine Amerikans and come to the firm conclusion that if we are to be free in conjunction with all peoples that we must first free ourselves from old repressed mentalities and old bad behavior patterns. Our patriotism is indigenous, without borders and opposed to all manifestations of narrow cultural nationalism!
An educator must 'lead forth' in the open battlefields of praxis or else is a mere parrot for the parasitic ruling class in our classrooms or a mere pawn in a three-tier chess game with a square checkers mind-set .
I really appreciated the website: http://www.razaeducators.org/
I am glad to see that the Spirit of Paulo Freire lives on! I was blessed to meet him at a small conference we had at Sac State decades ago one Saturday after Marianna Castorna invited me. There was a small dialogue and I got the impression that I was in the presence of a humble master. He had a grandfatherly way about him. I did a little research on him today.
It is clear and certain that a lot of the kinds of essential work he was doing back then in the field of basic literacy still needs to be done by us ~ by all of us concerned with raising a critical consciousness to higher levels of praxis. Action makes the frontlines!
We must really know our people and never distance ourselves from the collective genius of the people. Thus, the basic urgency of community literacy programs in conjunction with the building of a liberated free zone composed of a solid community-based infrastructure ~ learning community centers ~ right here now in the brain of the fascist beast!
Our youth will continue to be our own shock and awe troops in the times to go, especially their adept willingness at utilizing new forms of communications media technology, including Text Messages, Video Clips and utilizing the Power of the Internet with bold imagination!
A few years, the old vanguard of the Chicano Movement overestimted their organizing powers and underestimated the natural power of La Raza Cosmica during the Grand Marcha and failed to see that the basic community work had yet to be done and still remains to be done.
A lot of related complexities were not properly analyzed and estimated
into their calculations.

Nevertheless, some of us contine to plant seeds, grow our harvest and nurture new crops. We have a whole new generation of people who only have a vague idea of what a Chicano is or what the Chicano Movement was in the past. Where is La Raza Unida?
Hell, we are such a complex intricate people that we have not even reached a general understanding of what to refer to ourselves as as a unique people of Aztlan!
Yo soy Chicano yet I identify with all indigenus and Latino peoples. Plus, we need to reach our to our African-American brothers and sisters and all progressive peoples of all races, not corner ourselves into a racial bag and make it easier for our armed class oppressors to isolate us!
Venceremos Unidos!
Towards Total Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com
Sacramento, Califas, Aztlan
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Ron Gochez <mexicanoatucla@aol.com> wrote:
Dear Conference Participants,
Please see below for access to a conference survey, as well as a video short on the conference. The Association of Raza Educators thanks all participants, speakers, presenters, and organizers who made this event a reality. We are planning a 2nd Annual Conference on Colonialism and Urban Education with the goal of furthering existing projects and creating a Teachers of Color Congress. Join us and help us organize this amazing conference!!! All progressive educators are welcomed!

In the Movement,

The Association of Raza Educators


Become a member of the Association of Raza Educators in Los Angeles:
General meetings are held the first and third Thursday of every month, from 4:00 - 5:30pm,
at Santee Education Complex. 1921 Maple Ave.
LA, CA 90011 (Third Floor)

For more information please contact us at:
razaeducators@aol.com or (626) 617-0401.

Progressive Educators Institute:
Join us on a curriculum exchange and reading circle
Saturday, December 1, 2007
.
Reading Circles provide the space for educators to reflect on their pedagogy, and develop a critical consciousness of their roles as teachers.

Access the article online at www.decolonizing.com/pedagogyliterature.html .
Place TBA. Visit our website or contact us for more information.
The Institute is FREE of charge.

DONATE TO THE ARE UNDOCUMENTED STUDENT SCHOLARSHIP FUND!!
Make your donation at www.razaeducators.org
Our youth need your donations!! Thank you!!!


Access the Conference Survey:
Access the Conference Video Short:



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Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

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C/S



Profile: Educator Paulo Freire

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Educator Paulo Freire



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http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm
ideasthinkerspracticesupport

paulo freire

Perhaps the most influential thinker about education in the late twentieth century, Paulo Freire has been particularly popular with informal educators with his emphasis on dialogue and his concern for the oppressed.

contents: introduction | contribution | critique | further reading and references | links
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Paulo Freire (1921 - 1997), the Brazilian educationalist, has left a significant mark on thinking about progressive practice. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed is currently one of the most quoted educational texts (especially in Latin America, Africa and Asia). Freire was able to draw upon, and weave together, a number of strands of thinking about educational practice and liberation. Sometimes some rather excessive claims are made for his work e.g. 'the most significant educational thinker of the twentieth century'. He wasn't - John Dewey would probably take that honour - but Freire certainly made a number of important theoretical innovations that have had a considerable impact on the development of educational practice - and on informal education and popular education in particular. In this piece we assess these - and briefly examine some of the critiques that can be made of his work.

Contribution
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Five aspects of Paulo Freire's work have a particular significance for our purposes here. First, his emphasis on dialogue has struck a very strong chord with those concerned with popular and informal education. Given that informal education is a dialogical (or conversational) rather than a curricula form this is hardly surprising. However, Paulo Freire was able to take the discussion on several steps with his insistence that dialogue involves respect. It should not involve one person acting on another, but rather people working with each other. Too much education, Paulo Freire argues, involves 'banking' - the educator making 'deposits' in the educatee.

Second, Paulo Freire was concerned with praxis - action that is informed (and linked to certain values). Dialogue wasn't just about deepening understanding - but was part of making a difference in the world. Dialogue in itself is a co-operative activity involving respect. The process is important and can be seen as enhancing community and building social capital and to leading us to act in ways that make for justice and human flourishing. Informal and popular educators have had a long-standing orientation to action - so the emphasis on change in the world was welcome. But there was a sting in the tail. Paulo Freire argued for informed action and as such provided a useful counter-balance to those who want to diminish theory.

Third, Freire's attention to naming the world has been of great significance to those educators who have traditionally worked with those who do not have a voice, and who are oppressed. The idea of building a 'pedagogy of the oppressed' or a 'pedagogy of hope' and how this may be carried forward has formed a significant impetus to work. An important element of this was his concern with conscientization - developing consciousness, but consciousness that is understood to have the power to transform reality' (Taylor 1993: 52).

Fourth, Paulo Freire's insistence on situating educational activity in the lived experience of participants has opened up a series of possibilities for the way informal educators can approach practice. His concern to look for words that have the possibility of generating new ways of naming and acting in the world when working with people around literacies is a good example of this.

Fifth, a number of informal educators have connected with Paulo Freire's use of metaphors drawn from Christian sources. An example of this is the way in which the divide between teachers and learners can be transcended. In part this is to occur as learners develop their consciousness, but mainly it comes through the 'class suicide' or 'Easter experience' of the teacher.

The educator for liberation has to die as the unilateral educator of the educatees, in order to be born again as the educator-educatee of the educatees-educators. An educator is a person who has to live in the deep significance of Easter. Quoted by Paul Taylor (1993: 53)

Critique


Inevitably, there are various points of criticism. First, many are put off by Paulo Freire's language and his appeal to mystical concerns. The former was a concern of Freire himself in later life - and his work after Pedagogy of the Oppressed was usually written within a more conversational or accessible framework.

Second, Paulo Freire tends to argue in an either/or way. We are either with the oppressed or against them. This may be an interesting starting point for teaching, but taken too literally it can make for rather simplistic (political) analysis.

Third, there is an tendency in Freire to overturn everyday situations so that they become pedagogical. Freire's approach was largely constructed around structured educational situations. While his initial point of reference might be non-formal, the educational encounters he explores remain formal (Torres 1993: 127) In other words, his approach is still curriculum-based and entail transforming settings into a particular type of pedagogical space. This can rather work against the notion of dialogue (in that curriculum implies a predefined set of concerns and activities). Educators need to look for 'teachable moments' - but when we concentrate on this we can easily overlook simple power of being in conversation with others.

Fourth, what is claimed as liberatory practice may, on close inspection, be rather closer to banking than we would wish. In other words, the practice of Freirian education can involve smuggling in all sorts of ideas and values under the guise of problem-posing. Taylor's analysis of Freire's literacy programme shows that:

.. the rhetoric which announced the importance of dialogue, engagement, and equality, and denounced silence, massification and oppression, did not match in practice the subliminal messages and modes of a Banking System of education. Albeit benign, Freire's approach differs only in degree, but not in kind, from the system which he so eloquently criticizes. (Taylor 1993: 148)

Educators have to teach. They have to transform transfers of information into a 'real act of knowing' (op cit: 43).

Fifth, there are problems regarding Freire's model of literacy. While it may be taken as a challenge to the political projects of northern states, his analysis remains rooted in assumptions about cognitive development and the relation of literacy to rationality that are suspect (Street 1983: 14). His work has not 'entirely shrugged off the assumptions of the "autonomous model"' (ibid.: 14).

Last, there are questions concerning the originality of Freire's contribution. As Taylor has put it - to say that as many commentators do that Freire's thinking is 'eclectic', is 'to underestimate the degree to which he borrowed directly from other sources' (Taylor 1993: 34). Taylor (1993: 34-51) brings out a number of these influences and 'absorbtions' - perhaps most interestingly the extent to which the structure of Pedagogy of the Oppressed parallels Kosik's Dialectic of the Concrete (published in Spanish in the mid 1960s). Here we would simply invite you to compare Freire's interests with those of Martin Buber. His concern with conversation, encounter, being and ethical education have strong echoes in Freirian thought.

Further reading and references

Key texts: Paulo Freire's central work remains:

Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Important exploration of dialogue and the possibilities for liberatory practice. Freire provides a rationale for a pedagogy of the oppressed; introduces the highly influential notion of banking education; highlights the contrasts between education forms that treat people as objects rather than subjects; and explores education as cultural action. See, also:

Freire, P. (1995) Pedagogy of Hope. Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum. This book began as a new preface to his classic work, but grew into a book. It's importance lies in Freire's reflection on the text and how it was received, and on the development of policy and practice subsequently. Written in a direct and engaging way.

Biographical material: There are two useful English language starting points:

Freire, P. (1996) Letters to Cristina. Reflections on my life and work, London: Routledge. Retrospective on Freire's work and life. in the form of letters to his niece. He looks back at his childhood experiences, to his youth, and his life as an educator and policymaker.

Gadotti, M. (1994) Reading Paulo Freire. His life and work, New York: SUNY Press. Clear presentation of Freire's thinking set in historical context written by a close collaborator.

For my money the best critical exploration of his work is:

Taylor, P. (1993) The Texts of Paulo Freire, Buckingham: Open University Press.

Other references

Kosik, K. (1988) La dialectique du concret, Paris: Plon.

Street, B. V. (1984) Literacy in Theory and Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Torres, C. A. (1993) 'From the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" to "A Luta Continua": the political pedagogy of Paulo Freire' in P. McLaren and P. Leonard (eds.) Freire: A critical encounter, London: Routledge.

Links

Lesley Bentley - Paulo Freire. Brief biography plus lots of useful links.

Catedra Paulo Freire (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Sao Paulo) - click for English version.

Blanca Facundo's critique of Freire's ideas, and reactions to Facundo's critique - interesting collection of pieces.

Paulo Freire Institute - a wide range of material available about current work in the Freirian tradition. Click for the English version.

Daniel Schugurensky on Freire - consists of a collection of reviews of his books and links to other pages.

Q&A: The Freirian Approach to Adult Literacy Education, David Spener's review for ERIC.

How to cite this article: Smith, M. K. (1997, 2002) 'Paulo Freire and informal education', the encyclopaedia of informal education. [www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm. Last update: November 05, 2007]

© Mark K. Smith 1997, 2002 about the encyclopaedia of informal education
infed is an open, independent and not-for-profit site put together by a small group of educators [about us]. Give us your feedback; write for us. Check our copyright notice when copying.
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http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/slatta/hi216/documents/freire.htm

Thoughts by Paulo Freire

  • "A teacher is no longer merely the one who teaches; but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach."

  • Brief bio: Brazilian educator and author Paulo Freire (born Sept. 19, 1921, Recife, Brazil, died May 2, 1997, São Paulo, Brazil) sought to empower the world's oppressed through literacy programs that encouraged social and political awareness. Freire ) was Brazil's most important educator and author of many other books. He can be a tough read. His written Portuguese tends toward complex sentence structure, which makes tough going in English translation. He also liked to create words. However, his ideas are powerful and worth some effort to read and understand. In his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970, Eng. ed. 1972), Freire argued that the passive nature of traditional education promoted repression. He likened such backward teaching to a bank, wherein a teacher deposited information--which Freire believed was largely false--and the student passively collected. Freire favored a "pedagogy of liberation" that encouraged dialogue between teacher and student. He sought to empower students to ask questions and to challenge the status quo. He began refining his methods during the 1950s, when he taught literacy to peasants--adult men. The use of everyday words and ideas in his lessons proved highly effective. Many of Freire's students needed only 30 hours of instruction before being able to read and write.

    In 1963 he was appointed director of the Brazilian National Literacy Program, and in this post he outlined a plan to educate five million Brazilians. The military dictators who seized power in a coup in 1964 jailed Freire for subversion. Literate peasants and workers might well challenge Brazil's backward institutions-- just what Freire hoped. After his release he went into exile, he traveled the world, assisting in the establishment of literacy programs and teaching at a number of universities. In 1979 he returned to Brazil, where he cofounded the left-wing Workers Party. He served as education secretary of São Paulo beginning in 1988 but resigned several years later. Freire wrote more than 20 books, many considered classics in the field of education. His views have become widely influential in what is usually termed critical pedagogy.

  • Additional biographical and bibliographical information on Paulo Freire

    Thoughts on Education and Politics

    Selections from The Paulo Freire Reader (Continuum, 1998)
    1. A humanizing education is the path through which men and women can become conscious about their presence in the world. The way they act and think when they develop all their capacities, taking into consideration, their needs, but also the needs and aspirations of others. (p. 9)
    2. The pedagogy of the oppressed animated by authentic humanism (and not humanitarianism) generously presents itself as a pedagogy of man. Pedagogy which begins with the egoistic interests of the oppressors ( an egoism cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism) and makes of the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism, itself maintains and embodies oppression. It is an instrument of dehumanization. (p. 12)
    3. But while both humanization and dehumanization are real alternatives, only the first is the people's vocation. This vocation is constantly negated, yet it is affirmed by that very negation. It is thwarted by injustice, exploitation, oppression, and the violence of the oppressors; it is affirmed by the yearning of the oppressed for freedom and justice, and by their struggle to recover their lost humanity. (p. 45)
    4. Not infrequently, peasants in educational projects begin to discuss a generative theme in a lively manner, then stop suddenly and say to the education: "Excuse us, we ought to keep quiet and let you talk. You are the one who knows, we don't know anything." They often insist that there is no difference between them and the animals: when they do admit a difference, it favors the animals. "They are freer than we are." (p. 62)
    5. A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice co-intentional education. Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators. In this way, the presence of the oppressed in the struggle for their liberation will be what it should be: not pseudo-participation, but committed involvement. (pp. 66-67)
    6. Critique of the "Banking" Concept of Education: Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. (p. 67)
    7. Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information. It is a learning situation in which the cognizable object (far from being the end of the cognitive act) intermediates the cognitive actors--teacher on the one hand and students on the other. Accordingly, the practice of problem-posing education entails at the outset that the teacher-student contradiction be resolved. Dialogical relations--indispensable to the capacity of cognitive actors to cooperate in perceiving the same cognizable object--are other impossible. (p. 74)
    8. Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming--as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. Indeed, in contrast to other animals who are unfinished, but not historical, people know themselves to be unfinished: they are aware of their incompletion. In this incompletion and this awareness lie the very roots of education as an exclusively human manifestation. The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity. (p. 77)
    9. One aspect of the reply is to be found in the distinction between systematic education, which can only be changed by political power, and educational projects, which should be carried out with the oppressed in the process of organizing them. (p. 54)

    Paulo Freire, Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work (trans. By Donald Macedo, 1996)

    These excepts reveal something of Freire's childhood, education, and other formative life experiences.

    Childhood: “The search became almost a game and I started to learn the most minute details of our backyard. The banana tree leaves; the majestic cashew tree with its branches trailing on the ground, its roots curving up through the dirt like the veins of old hands; the coconut tree; the various types of mango trees; the breakfast tree and the strong wind that moved the tree branches; the singing of the birds: all of these things expanded my curiosity as a fascinated child.

    The knowledge that I was gaining of my childhood world—such as the wavy shadows, like dancing bodies, projected by banana tree leaves— began to secure in me a form of calmness that other children my age did not have. The more I tried to understand during the day how things worked, by attempting to determine varied noises and their causes, the more I began to feel liberated from my ghostly nights. My efforts to know did not kill, however, my childlike spontaneity or replace it with a deformed rationality. In truth, I was not the type of kid who spoke much of his upright world, characterized by coat, necktie, and heavy starched collar, or who repeated adults' words.

    I lived my world intensely. From my experiences I began to learn about the world's day-to-day routine without losing sight of the world's beauty. Simply put, I began to move through the world with security, whether by day or by night.

    My father played an important role in my constant search for understanding. Being affectionate, intelligent, and open, he never refused to listen to us talk about our interests. He and my mother were a harmonious couple whose union did not lose them their individuality. They exemplified for us what it means to be understood and to understand, never showing any signs of intolerance. Although my mother was Catholic and my father was a spiritualist, they always respected each other's religious opinions. From them, I learned early on the value of dialogue. I never was afraid to ask questions, and I do not recall ever being punished for disagreeing with them.

    They taught me how to read my first words and then how to write them on the ground with a wooden stick under the shade of our mango tree. My first words and phrases were linked to my experiences and not my parents'. Instead of a boring primer or, worse, an "ABC Table" for memorizing the letters of the alphabet (as if students learn how to speak by sounding out letters), I had my backyard as my first primer, my first world, my first school. The ground, protected by tree leaves, was my blackboard and sticks were my chalk.

    Early Education: By six years of age, when I arrived at the little school where Eunice Vasconcelos was my first professional teacher, I already knew how to read and write. I have never forgotten the joy with which I welcomed the exercises called "sentence forming" that our teacher gave us. She would ask me to write in a straight line all the words that I knew. Afterward, I was supposed to form sentences with these words and later we discussed the meaning of each sentence I had created. This is how, little by little, I began to know my verbs, tenses, and moods; she taught me by increasing the level of difficulty. My teacher's fundamental preoccupation was not with making me memorize grammatical definitions but with stimulating the development of my oral and writing abilities.

    There was no rupture between my parents' teaching at home and the pedagogy of my teacher Eunice at school. At home, as in school, I was always invited to learn and never reduced to an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge.

    No barrier existed between the way I was raised at home and the work I was given at school. Thus, schoolwork never was a threat to my curiosity but rather was a stimulus. The time I spent playing and searching in my backyard was not the same as my experiences in school, but school was not my opposite point of reference, something that made me feel uncomfortable. Time spent in my backyard overflowed into time in school, making me feel happy in both spaces. In the final analysis, even though school had its own conditions, it did not limit my joy in life. It is the same joy in life that has characterized my entire life. It is the same joy in life that I experienced as a child in Jaboarao and which I continued to experience, as a man, during my time in exile. This joy has a great deal to do with my optimistic outlook on life, which means that, as a critical person, I am never paralyzed by life. This is why I always push myself toward forms of engagement and action that are compatible with my political beliefs. . . .

    Some Lessons of History: In 1928, I listened to my father and my Uncle Monteiro say that it was not only necessary to change the state of things, but urgent. The country was being destroyed, robbed, humiliated. They used that notorious phrase, "Brazil is right on the edge of the abyss." These are the kinds of things they would talk about: "They won't speak, and if they do, they won't be heard; they'll be oppressed." They referred here to Vieira.

    In a greeting to the marquess of Montalvao, viceroy of Brazil, at the Misericordia Hospital in Bahia in 1638, Vieira said, in the most political of all his sermons, that the silence imposed by the crown was one of Brazil's worst predicaments.
    We well know, those of us who speak the Latin language that this word infans, infante, means one who does not speak. That was the State the boy Baptist was in when Our Lady came to visit him. This is also the stare in which Brazil has been for many years, which, in my view, has been the major cause of its troubles. Since the patient cannot speak, all conjectures are difficult medicine. That is why, of all the sufferers Christ cured, none required so much time or care as the dumb possessed man: the worst accident Brazil suffered in its infirmity was that of doing away with its own voice. Many times it may have wanted to righteously complain, many times it may have wanted to ask for the medicine to cure its condition, but respect or violence has always drowned the words in its throat, and if ever a word has made it to the ears of those who should provide a remedy, so have the voices of power, to ensure victory for the claims of reason.
    Brazil wastes away, My Lord, (let us say it in one word) because some ministers of His Majesty do not come here to seek our welfare, but rather to seek our wealth.

    Vieira played with the meanings of "taking," at times using it to mean the act of accepting responsibility, control, and at times to mean the act of possessing what belongs to others, robbery. Vieira went so far as to say to the Marquess of Montalvao and his entourage:
    The King orders them [the ministers] to take Pernambuco, and they are content to take it. This taking possession of what is others', whether by the King or by the peoples, is the source of [Brazil's] disease. And the various arts and ways and instruments of taking are the symptoms that, being extremely dangerous by nature, make the disease even more lethal. I ask, just so the causes of the symptoms become better known: In this land, does the minister of justice take? Yes, he takes. Does the minister of finance? Yes, he takes. Does the minister of the republic? Yes, he takes. Does the minister of the militia? Yes, he takes. Does the minister of state? Yes, he takes.
    Joaquim Nabuco in 1879, giving a speech about a project for constitutional reform, said:
    Gentlemen the project being currently discussed comes to this registry under the saddest of auspices. It is a project that has been debated by a council of ministers, resolved in ministerial conference, and for that reason, I said, and the honorable representative from Piauf [Mr. Doria] seconded my expression, that the investigative record on this parliamentary initiative has languished on the minister of justice's desk. The project was discussed with the emperor, was the object of transactions within the ministry leading to the termination of two of its most prominent members, and, only after having gone through all these procedures and investigations, arrived at this house, where it was endorsed by a vast majority on the same day. . . .

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    Sunday, November 18, 2007

    Migrants lose jobs as hiring law nears; Arizona Republic

    Migrants lose jobs as hiring law nears
    Employers verifying status fire hundreds, attorneys say
    Daniel González ~ The Arizona Republic
    Nov. 18, 2007 12:00 AM
    >>>
    >>>>>
    Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of undocumented workers have been fired as a result of Arizona businesses reviewing the work-eligibility forms of their employees as the state's new employer-sanctions law draws near.
    The fired workers couldn't provide missing information uncovered during the reviews or confessed to being in the country illegally, say attorneys involved in the reviews.

    The number of firings could grow significantly once the law goes into effect Jan. 1 as employers scramble to make sure they are in compliance. Under the law, repeat violators will lose their business licenses.

    The law, signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano in July, is aimed at clamping down on illegal immigration in Arizona by pulling the plug on the job magnet that has drawn undocumented immigrants to the state by the tens of thousands over the past decade.

    Businesses groups, however, asked a federal judge Wednesday to toss out the law, arguing that it is unconstitutional and invites racial profiling.
    They favor a federal solution that allows more foreign workers to enter legally to fill gaps in the labor market.

    Reviews lead to firings
    Federal law requires employers to ask all new employees for proof that they are eligible to work in the U.S., such as a driver's license, a green card or a Social Security card. Employers are required to record the information on forms known as I-9s.

    Internal reviews of those forms by businesses have led to the firing of "many hundreds of workers, and perhaps thousands," said Julie Pace, a Phoenix lawyer who is performing I-9 audits for companies. She also represents business groups that filed suit against the state seeking to have the sanctions law thrown out.

    Employers are not allowed to directly ask whether a worker is legal, Pace said. And many illegal workers could still slip through the audits if they presented fake documents that appeared real when they were hired and they filled out the I-9 correctly. But in many instances, employers are finding that the I-9s were not filled out properly. Upon questioning, employees are admitting that they are in the country illegally, or they can't provide the missing information.

    "A lot of employees are coming forward and saying, 'I know you didn't know this, but I'm illegal. Can you help me?' " said Rebecca Winterscheidt, a Phoenix immigration lawyer.

    When that happens, employers have no choice but to fire the worker, Winterscheidt said. Keeping them on would violate the law's provision against "knowingly" employing illegal workers.

    "That's the sad part of this. A lot of these are really, really long-term and very good employees," Winterscheidt said.

    She agreed that at least hundreds of workers already have lost their jobs as a result of the audits.

    "Many hundreds, I think, would be very conservative," she said.

    Eligio Medina Roldan, 44, is one of those workers who lost his job. The undocumented immigrant from Mexico City had been working at a Phoenix warehouse for the past four years using fake documents. Earlier this month, a supervisor from the company's corporate headquarters in Texas questioned him about some of the information he provided on the I-9 form. Medina Roldan said he was given eight days to prove he was legally eligible to work in the U.S. or he would lose his job.

    "I don't have papers that show I can work legally, so I won't be able to work," he said. "And I can't work, then I've lost the reason for being here. My only option is to go back" to Mexico.

    Tight labor market
    >>>

    >>>
    The dismissals come at a time when the state's winter-tourism industry is kicking into high gear and businesses already are struggling to find workers because of very low unemployment rates.

    "All of our hotels need workers. Our industry is experiencing a huge labor shortage," said David Nance, vice president of membership for the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association and the Valley Hotel and Resort Association.
    In October, Arizona's unemployment rate rose slightly to 3.5 percent after falling to 3.3 percent in September, a 40-year low. The unemployment rate in the Phoenix area rose to 3 percent from 2.8 percent in September. An unemployment rate below 5 percent is considered full employment.
    Some economists think the sanctions law could wreak havoc on the state's economy by exacerbating labor shortages and scaring away companies from locating here.

    But a new study by the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization in Washington, D.C., that favors reductions in immigration, suggests that there are plenty of Americans who could step in to replace illegal workers.

    The study estimates that there are 340,000 illegal workers in Arizona, 12 percent of the state's workforce. If all were to leave, they could be replaced by some of the 710,000 Arizonans who are currently outside the state's labor pool because they are not actively looking for work, according to the study.
    The 710,000 include 196,000 teenagers and 514,000 adults with no more than a high-school education.

    "The question is, is there enough labor to replace the illegals? Yes," said Steven Camarota, the center's research director.

    Dawn McLaren, a research economist at Arizona State University, doubted those findings.

    She said Camarota is counting people who have made the decision not to work and therefore are not considered part of the labor pool.

    Some may be students living with parents, she said. Some may be disabled. Others may be staying home with children.

    "If they haven't joined the labor force thus far, they are paying for their livelihood some other way," McLaren said.

    Coaxing those people into the labor market would require significantly raising the often low wages paid to immigrants doing manual labor or other low-skilled jobs, she said. But that could lead to businesses closing, higher prices for consumers, and higher inflation, she added.

    "Someone has got to want the job an employer is offering, and the employer has got to want that person to work for them," McLaren said.

    Understanding the law

    The sanctions law was passed amid enormous public pressure on local officials to do something about illegal immigration. With 500,000 illegal immigrants, Arizona has the highest share of illegal immigrants of any state in the nation. It also has the highest number of illegal crossings of any border state.

    Businesses caught knowingly or intentionally employing illegal workers under the law face a 10-day business license suspension for a first offense and having their licenses revoked permanently for a second offense.
    Other companies are getting prepared.

    As of Tuesday, 4,460 out of about 150,000 Arizona employers had signed up to use a federal database to electronically verify the employment eligibility of new employees. The sanctions law requires employers to use the database or risk punishment if caught knowingly employing illegal workers.

    Only 433 employers had signed up to use the program before the sanctions law was signed.

    Many businesses have been conducting internal audits.

    Congress passed a federal employer-sanctions law in 1986 that required the I-9 forms and created fines for employers who knowingly hired illegal workers.

    Until recently, however, the federal government has been lax about enforcing the law and punishing violators.

    As a result, "employers got the message that the I-9 was not something to take too seriously," Camarota said.

    Arizona's new sanctions law, however, is putting pressure on employers to make sure their I-9s are in order to avoid having their license revoked or suspended.

    Yuvixa Koren, owner of Aguilas Radio Taxi, plans to do an audit in December.
    "I want to make sure the (forms) are in compliance," Koren said.

    Koren said she is afraid her company will be targeted because many of her workers and drivers are Latino immigrants. But she said only 17 of her workers are official employees.The company's 100 drivers are considered independent contractors, so they are exempt from filling out the I-9 form, Koren said.

    Nancy-Jo Merritt, a Phoenix lawyer who specializes in immigration compliance, said many other employers are conducting I-9 audits.
    "We've been doing dozens of I-9 audits for the last several months," she said. "More than dozens."
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