Reinventing: Essence and usefulness of Freire’s work for the past and next 100 years*

Reinventions

The collection of articles in this special issue (SI) represents diverse reinventions of Freire’s work, from before he wrote his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), to the present. The authors also explain why continuing to rigorously reinvent Freire is essential. There are various common, intersectional themes within the topics that the authors chose to answer our call for papers’ main question, ‘how [does] Freire’s work continue to reinvent education worldwide and how scholars continue to reinvent his work?’ Similar to democratically determining generative themes to teach through within Freirean learning spaces, I thread common themes through the article to unpack how the authors defined, theorized, problematized, and utilized Freire for reinventing his and others’ work. I conduct this synthesis with the reflexivity, from Freire’s words, that every reader will have their own socio-historically constructed reading of this SI. My hope is that our critical syntheses together on Freire’s work will help unpack and possibly foresee his vital influences and necessary reinventions for the next 10, 50, and 100+ years to better our world for all globally and have a sustainable Earth.

Several authors directly stressed that any scholar’s work, including Freire’s, becomes a relic if not contextually reinvented, becoming largely impractical within foreign socio-historical environments.

The old is capable of remaining new when it remains faithful through time to the experience of original and founding intuitions and inspirations. (Freire, 1998a, p. 41)

As Freire argued in non-fatalistic ways that our histories largely construct our futures, Morrow (2019) argued that Freirean reinvention represents acts of radical historicism (de/re)construct teaching through bottom-up approaches that unceasingly denounce oppressions and announce possibilities of liberation, empowerment, and planetary sustainability. In other words, to rigorously compare and contrast Freire’s pedagogies set within specific past contexts to be relevant in current contexts, and to denounce socio-historical oppressions (e.g. coloniality, patriarchy, racism, heteronormativity, and anthropocentrism (i.e. dominance over Nature)) for announcing possibilities to counter them.

Rigorous historical analysis is vital because the most prominent tension of reinvention is problematizing if the essence of Freire’s theories, philosophies, and pedagogies are appropriately being utilized/reused or not. In the simplest of terms, questioning if Freire would object to what is being done in his name. For example, all authors directly or indirectly discussed conscientization (i.e. conscientização), for which Freire is probably publicly most known for. However, as various SI contributors pointed out, Freire stopped using the term when it became overly simplified to rudimentary step-by-step methods by too many technocrats (Schugurensky, 2011). Arguing the appropriateness of certain reinventions is contentious; however, the overall goals for globally all-inclusive socio-environmental justice and planetary sustainability of using Freire’s work remain constant. Reinvention work is needed but far from easy, including trying to solve what Carlos Alberto Torres (2022) argues in his article as the greatest pedagogical conundrum of ‘education as the practice of freedom and [, opposingly,] a model of the pedagogy of the oppressed’ (2022, p. 2176).

Reinventing Freire’s silences

Unpacking what Freire is criticized for not addressing in his work—his silences—is the heart of Torres’ article (2022). Torres focuses on his silences, or muted voice, on labor, gender, and citizenship. He analyzes possible contextual reasons for these silences of Freire and warns that before criticizing him, scholars should explore Freire’s complete oeuvre. Too many people shallowly read his most famous book Pedagogy of the Oppressed and ignore the rest of his work. This criticism is indirectly discussed through many of the SI articles, including my article (Misiaszek, 2022a), as I argue with other scholars (Au & Apple, 2007; McLaren, 2007) against the notion that Freire is anti-environmental expressed by those overlooking his later works and superficially reading his most famous book. Some scholars even criticize Freire for disregarding local voices and cultures; however, the SI authors argue the importance of reinventing Freire to counter cultural invasion worldwide and give clear examples of how such criticisms are misguided.

There are various tensions about what cultural invasion is, as Torres unpacks conundrums of popular education models with the tenets of human rights as stated by the United Nations. Herein lies the need to problematize reinventions as never easy, step-by-step pedagogical constructions—similar to why Freire stopped using the term conscientização. Freire argued that teaching and learning are never easy but must be rigorous and has no endpoints. Torres (2022) stresses the need for learning through ‘epistemology[ies] of curiosity that is no way naïve or ingenuous and that respects popular knowledge and popular culture’ (p. 2171).

‘From these pages I hope my trust in the people is clear, my faith in men and women, and my faith in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love’ (Freire, 1972, p. 19, Torres translation).

Teaching must be through authentic, democratic dialogue which questions the possibilities for transformation – ‘Freire’s ‘standpoint theory’ (or theoretical point of view)’ (Torres, 2022, p. 2171).

Michael Joseph Viola’s article focuses on Freire as being too silent on racism, especially without mentioning it directly in his earlier works (Viola, 2022). However, Viola stresses how so much anti-racism work, inside and outside education, has been accomplished by reinventing Freire. He argues the need to stretch, rather than narrow, Marxist, Freirean, and other radical/revolutionary scholarship. Without such reinvention, ‘in and by itself Freire’s work is exiguous in confronting the racial aspects of racial capitalism’ (Viola, 2022, p. 2199). Viola details how Freire’s aspects of dialogical cultural action are interconnected with Black liberation histories and futures, including Freire’s ‘solidarity in advancing socialist and anticolonial educational projects in Africa make him an important contributor to it’ (p. 2196). These aspects coincide with Ali A. Abdi’s article discussed next.

Philosophies of education reinvented

Several authors discuss reinventing Freire’s work within local philosophies of education and vice-versa. Abdi (2022) examines his own personal Freirean reinventions while first reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed, situated mainly in Latin America, to re-situate Freire’s words within his own African contexts. He unpacks the benefits of reinventing Ubuntu with Freire’s work for ‘analytically discernible onto-epistemological and pedagogical connections and operations’ (Abdi, 2021, p. 2286) to emerge. Abdi emphasizes that the ‘discernible relationship between Freirean and Ubuntu philosophies of education is, in multiple readings, even thicker than one might have imagined’ (Abdi, 2022, p. 2293). He further argues that ‘situating people’s lives, needs and expectations’ from Freire coincides with ‘African traditional Ubuntu philosophies of life and education, the circularly connected nature of the social with communal learning and pedagogical designs, operations and outcomes were also time-space punctuated’ (Abdi, 2022, p. 2287). By thickly attaching the two through reinventions grounded upon humanization, Abdi contends that education can be increasingly transformational within Africa and Latin America, as well as worldwide.

Ho and Tseng (2022) explore Freirean reinvention within East Asian contexts by delving into Mohism which is ‘a political philosophy for the working class that expanded into grassroots movements for people’s welfare in ancient China’ (p. 2180). They focus specifically on unpacking bottom-up approaches and the connections between respect and love, which spans both Freirean and Mozo-inspired pedagogies for praxis to end violence and oppressions. Similarly, the importance of authentic relationships is expressed by several SI authors, including Viola writing that ending oppressions are not only ‘class interventions but also genuine relationships of cooperation built upon the qualities of love, faith, trust, and humility’ (Viola, 2022, p. 2197). Mozi, similar to Freire, viewed ideologically ‘innate’ hierarchies as only led to oppressions, including war (Ho & Tseng, 2022). Ho and Tseng detail similarities between the two, such as dialogical, problem-posing teaching approaches, but also acknowledge various differences (e.g. Mozi relied more on learning to use pure logic to end oppressions and violence). They argue that Freire relied on literacy proficiency as differing from Mozi, who focused on ‘technology and by evaluating the righteousness of the political system’ (Ho & Tseng, 2022, p. 2188). Although Freire stressed subjectivity more, I would argue that deconstructing the ‘righteousness of political system(s)’ is also inherent to Freire’s work, especially when including global governance.

Decolonial reinventing

Reinventing education through Freire’s work on decoloniality and reinventing Freire’s work through theories de-(neo)coloniality are both essential. For the former aspect, various authors (Abdi, Mayo, Torres, Viola, and myself) point to how he utilized the work of Fanon and/or Memmi, including significantly revising Pedagogy of the Oppressed after reading their works. An example of the latter aspect is reinventing current Southern Theorists’ work, such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2018) arguments to counter epistemologies of the North founded upon coloniality, patriarchy, and capitalism (see Albi, Mayo, Suoranta, Torres, and my article).

In his article, Peter Mayo expresses these arguments by using Audrey Lorde’s (2018) maxim that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. He focuses on coloniality’s ‘oppressor consciousness’ for exploitive education for mental conditioning that entrenches perceptions of insurmountable ‘limit situations’, as termed by Friere, to instill fatalism—a topic I end this editorial discussing. Mayo, aligning with Freire and numerous Freireans, stresses that banking education is essential to continue (neo)coloniality. This includes teaching as a tool for cultural invasion to deposit unquestionable ‘answers’ (or Truths) to extinguish dialectic learning and internalize inferiority within the colonialized by instilling ‘fear[s] of freedom’, as Freire drew from Fromm, to counter such self-deficient (sub)consciousness (Mayo, 2022).

The topics of language and linguistics are examples of how decoloniality is threaded through several articles. Mayo expands on coloniality through various aspects of education, including teaching through the colonial language to infuse hegemony. In my article (Misiaszek, 2022a), I unpack the use of language to further neocolonization by falsely justifying unsustainable socio-environmental violence and, thus, I argue the importance of ongoing and future Freirean reinventions of (eco)linguistics. Lauren Ila Misiaszek (2022b) argues for letter writing that is ‘inclusive across intersectional identities’ that, in part, ‘subvert[s] the gendered nature of the written and spoken languages themselves, contributing to opening up an inclusive “you”’ (p. 2320).

Reinventing for development, sustainability, and education

Several authors discuss how Freire argued for teaching to critically deconstruct oppressive ‘development’ to, in turn, reconstruct development within social justice models. Authors both analyze his work on education for development and reinvent his work to current contested terrains of development and education for development. This includes (un)sustainable and/or (anti-)environmental impacts of (sustainable) development models upon Nature beyond humans. For example, my article focuses on ecopedagogical writing by Freire in his later life and ecopedagogical reinventions of Freirean teaching (Misiaszek, 2022a).

Heinz Peter Gerhardt (2022) provides an in-depth analysis of Freire heading the ‘Cultural Extension Service of the University of Recife’ in the early 1960s where he first implemented his literacy education methods. Gerhardt, in part, unpacks Freire’s theoretical and pedagogical becoming. His analysis includes Freire’s influences on reinventing Brazilian education, especially the intersectionalities of higher education, adult education, and education for development, as well as Freire reinventing his own pedagogical groundings while working in these sectors (Gerhardt, 2022). This work was being done while the Brazilian government was pressuring the role of universities to guide and increase national development; however, Freire questions ‘development’ for who? Gerhardt points out that Freire’s work was initially not seen as ‘practical’ enough to meet “experts”’ development goals through technocratic approaches. Only after Freire’s success in teaching students to read quickly and externally viewed as ‘efficient’ did his work become seen as valuable tools for development.

Self-development, as connected to larger societal development, is the focus of Juha Suoranta, Nina Hjelt, Tuukka Tomperi, and Anna Grant’s (2022) article analyzing a Finish adult, non-formal education model called ‘Life Skills for All’ as a Freirean reinvention, as well as building off folkbildning/kansansivistys (‘people’s education’ in Swedish/Finnish) and German ‘Bildung’ which emphasizes personal growth and self-cultivation through enlightenment and cultural education. Coinciding with Gerhardt’s description of the Brazilian government’s past technocratic emphasis, the authors discuss how Freire is too-frequently viewed narrowly as difficult and impractical to implement. Both articles argue that technical ‘training’ with critical ‘education’ is essential, as students must ‘critically question the general conditions of the working life and “unveil the ideology enveloped in the very expectations of the students” and the training that the educators are giving’ (Suoranta et al., 2022, p. 2233). Their arguments coincide with a conversation I had in 2012 with Moacir Gadotti in his Paulo Freire Institute, São Paulo office, as he described the Institute’s training and production of free, open-source software with needed critical education on the possibilities and essentialness of its usage. These arguments are also expressed by Rauf and Shareef (2022) in their article on teaching architecture, exemplified within Iraqi higher education contexts - their arguments are crucial for teaching architecture globally.

On the planetary level, my article analyzes Freire’s influences, essentialness, and needed reinventions in teaching to critically read (i.e. ecopedagogical literacy) what is ‘development’ and ‘sustainability’ through diverse local-to-planetary perspectives and epistemologies in hopes of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Misiaszek, 2022a). Specifically, after briefly describing ecopedagogy as (in)directly grounded in Freire’s scholarship, I focus on his influences on the (eco)linguistics of ‘development’, which constructs socio-environmental (in)justices and planetary (un)sustainability. Ecopedagogy is threaded directly through several articles (see Farag et al., 2022; Ho & Tseng, 2022; Torres, 2022; Viola, 2022). For example, Ho and Tseng (2022) argue that ‘Mohist sustainability idea echoes Freirean ecopedagogy concept in which environmental exploitation is also a form of oppression (Misiaszek, 2020); both have implications for offering environmental sustainability pedagogy or resource sustainability practices’ (Ho & Tseng, 2022, p. 2189).

Contextual reinventing without cultural invasion

Another main thread throughout the articles was how (reinvented) Freirean teaching is essential for disrupting cultural invasion under the guise and politics of ‘development’, or rather de-development for many. For example, Mayo (2022) wrote how Freire, quite a religious person, expressed how the church too often is a tool for colonial, Northern development, ‘a system operating at the behest of western colonial power and multinationals’ (p. 2280).

Yeo and Yoo (2022) discuss how refugee education is a powerful tool for assimilation and, as such, a tool for cultural invasion. They deconstruct how refugees are frequently seen as mere objects of intervention rather than subjects of transformation, which justifies technocratic education that barely satisfies the UN’s rights-based approach (RBA). Yeo and Yoo offer crucial, humanistic Freirean reinventions needed for refugee education.] A key question is how can Freire’s praxis-based teaching ground refugee education within politics discouraging anything that may lead to ‘radical’ questioning and/or transformation within host countries. Freire (1998b) argued that education cannot be apolitical; the politics of cultural invasion through refugee education that is (neo)colonializing education needs to be disrupted and, arguing with Yeo and Yoo, radical Freirean reinvention.

(Post)digital reinvention

Technological innovations are intimately connected to ‘development’, but their creation, uses, and politics behind them must be critically unpacked. Being able to reinvent Freire in a postdigital world is essential, in which ‘technologies permeate all aspects of our being… hard to define; messy; unpredictable; digital and analog; technological and non-technological; biological and informational’ (Jandrić & Hayes, 2022, p. 324). Farag et al. (2022) argue for such reinvention by reconstructing online distance learning which, in part, includes teaching students how to read the Internet critically. An example of Freirean internet literacies given by them has the skill to critically read social media, such as Facebook, on what knowledges are ‘taught’ and not ‘taught’ within the politics of Facebook’s sole goal of keeping people scrolling and ‘liking’ items regardless of the content. The need for quality, transformative distance learning has been exponentially heightened during the Covid-19 pandemic, in which most learning was rushed to be online due to necessity, without enough time for necessary rigorous critical analysis of its quality, political, and social (in)justice aspects. In addition, Farag et al. argue through Foucault’s arguments against surveillance and oppressions, which affect the spread of places (Panopticism), to compare with COVID-19 measures, as neoliberal concerns were repeatedly prioritized over all others, including life-threatening health concerns. They juxtapose Facebook’s early motto of ‘Move fast and break things’, which should not include ‘breaking people’ through their technologies.

Conclusion: Utopianism inseparable from reinventing

The essence and importance of utopianism in reinventing education, especially radically disrupting fatalism within education, is emphasized throughout all articles from various approaches and contexts. To unpack this, I highlight Lauren Ila Misiaszek’s (2022b) argument of the possibilities of reinventions through ‘a framework of timescapes and a feminist, Freirean praxis of letter-writing to enrich Freirean studies’ (p. 2312). She richly describes her own recent letter writing with Cristina Bruno Freire (Paulo’s niece in his book Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work (1996) and Paulo’s cousin Nathercia Lacerda (who edited the collection Home and the World Out There: Letters from Paulo Freire to Nathercinha (2016 [2020])). In the former book, Lauren discusses how Araújo Freire (Freire, 1996), in the former book’s Notes section, wrote how Freire felt misunderstood –self-fatalism of sorts—he turned to poetry and letter writing to deny associated pretentiousness and formality. Abdi (2022) similarly points out how in Letters to Cristina that ‘Freire was not willing to camouflage his disappointment with continually commodified educational realities for the affluent classes, and the unfortunate organizing against critical thinking and critical pedagogy for the oppressed’ (p. 2290).

Lauren provides Cristina’s own words to explain her fatalistic thinking while living ‘in a country where social and economic disparities are stark and brutally interfere in mental health’ (Misiaszek, 2022b, p. 2315) as a psychologist has been disrupted by often thinking of ‘Uncle Paulo with all of his kindness and generosity in looking at life, the world, and the enormous possibilities of inserting the individual into their universe, was of great importance for my formation (training)’ (2022, p. 2315). In another letter replying to Lauren’s question about how her uncle spoke of reinvention, Cristina answered that reinvention emerges from ‘[g]iv[ing] each individual voice and critical consciousness, with the aim to change each of their worlds and thus help to change the greater world!!!! Paulo Freire present!!!!!’ (2022, p. 2316). Teaching that instills fatalism does not allow for Freirean reinvention, as acting upon our dreams for a better world becomes foolish because oppressions are normalized as unchangeable realities. In addition, letter writing and poetry also become foolish acts within fatalistic ideologies.

Other instances of SI authors utilizing (in)directly the need for utopianism within Freirean reinvention are too numerous to include in this short editorial. One example includes Ho and Tseng (2022) comparing how both Freire and Mozi (2021) despised falsely ‘inherent’ social hierarchies, which only leads to fatalism and devours hope and, for Mozi in particular, can only lead to war. Another example is Farag et al.’s usage of Foucault’s ‘disciplinary mechanism’ to connect with Freire’s arguments of fatalism and necrophilia as grounding banking education, which is instilled too-frequently in the digitalization of education. On the topic of refugee education, Yeo and Yoo (2022) argue that various aspects of teaching and utopianism must be saturated within refugee education because, without such saturation, the pedagogy fatalistically justifies the oppression of refugees. One final example is what I wrote arguing that without hope in environmental pedagogies, Earth has the ultimate fate of unsustainable devastation because planetary unsustainability and socio-environmental injustices become our singular, perverted future (Misiaszek, 2022a).

Greg William Misiaszek
Institute of Educational Theories, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
[email protected]

Acknowledgments

The editors wish to thank all of the authors and the EPAT team for their ceaseless efforts and Dr. Samson Maekele Tsegay, Special Issue Assistant Editor, for his important contributions throughout the life of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.