Pedagogy of the Oppressed

an icon at the age of 50

Abstract

This article focuses on the 50th anniversary of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, completed in 1968. We consider the book as the articulating nucleus of a complex, polyphonic work under permanent construction / reconstruction. This work is part of a trilogy that begins with his academic thesis of 1959 (Education and Brazilian Actuality), continues in Education as a Practice
of Freedom (1965), until draining into the book on screen. And that continues in other later works, such as Cultural Action for Freedom and Other Writings (1970). It is also considered that his author intended to rewrite it and did so, in part, in the books Pedagogy of Hope: A Reunion With the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1992) and Politics and Education (1993). In this rewriting, almost 25 years later,
Freire remade concepts, bet on another paradigm, discarded characters and emphases from the 1968 book, demonstrating the permanent movement of epistemological reconstruction marked by the historical circumstances of his political-pedagogical practices in Brazil and in many countries of the world. As a builder of his diverse historical times and political spaces, he erected “the various Paulo Freire”, having the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed as the connecting nucleus of the other parts of his written work.