Paulo Freire Centennial

On the occasion of the centennial of Paulo Freire’s birth in September 2021 and of fifty years since the initial publication of his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, this book focuses on how scholars continue to reinvent his work across geographic and thematic contexts. Reinvention is specifically used because Freire vehemently opposed simply repeating his work, calling on scholars to instead meaningfully recontextualize it. The book illustrates how without critical, contextual reinvention, teaching cannot lead to praxis – students’ critical reflexivity about how to make a better world and sustainable planet.

The chapter authors’ explorations of past, present, and future-looking praxis, including their own, offer foundations, histories, possibilities, challenges, and examples of reinventing Freire’s work. It is work that counters fatalistic teaching that reproduces and justifies oppressions. In Pedagogy of Indignation, Freire stated that students should be educated to “dream of constant reinvention of the world, the dream of liberation, thus the dream of a less ugly society, one less mean-only dream of human beings' silent adaptation to a reality considered untouchable.” Readers will have the opportunity to understand how reinventions of Freire’s work continue to commit to these crucial goals.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory.