Google paid tribute to Paulo Freire, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century

Through a new doodle, Google today pays tribute – 100 years after his birth – to the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo freire, recognized around the world as one of the most important thinkers, popular educators and theorists of education.

Born in 1921 in Recife, Brazil; Freire was a teacher, creator of ideas and of the so-called “Paulo Freire method”, which was used in Brazil in literacy campaigns and brought him the ideological persecution, prison after the military coup of 1964 and a long exile.

For 10 years he worked in social services for the Brazilian working class, from which he created a universal educational model, which includes a methodology of cultural exchange between teacher and student through their socio-historical circumstances. The ultimate goal is to create a democratic society free from illiteracy.

In 1962, he had for the first time the opportunity to apply his theories in a meaningful way by teaching 300 rural workers to read and write in 45 days, but his good results, which in principle earned him the creation of thousands of Cultural circles throughout the country, later led to being imprisoned for 70 days from the 1964 military coup and later to exile in Chile.

Although he was the author of a very wide variety of titles, his most representative work and the one that most influenced educational and social thought of the twentieth century was Pedagogy of the oppressed, where he proposes to pupils and teachers “that they undertake together, as oppressed, the historic task of freeing themselves by appropriating the world around them”.

Freire also said that education must become a political process, since each subject does politics from whatever space he finds himself in and the class cannot be indifferent to this process; For the educator, knowledge must be built on the basis of the different realities which affect the two political subjects in action, the apprentice and the teacher.

Among other recognitions, Freire received in 1986 the international “Peace and Education” prize awarded by the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Fund (UNESCO) and was distinguished as doctor “honoris causa” by twenty universities from different countries.

He died on May 2, 1997, at the age of 75, and a few days before his death he was still debating himself the new perspectives of education in the world. His pedagogical thought continues to this day, having left a deep mark on what is called critical pedagogy.