MARLEANA M ROLON-SANFELIZ

Marleana M Rolón

Duncan Montañez

Fabian Soler

José Rivera

Prof: Petra Avillan

Course: Intermediate English Section 134

August 27, 2016

Paulo Freire reflects on his life

            Paulo Freire was interviewed by the International Literacy Institute in Philadelphia. This interview was done in 1996 by the World Conference Literacy. In this conversation he sates his opinion and way of thinking of a lot of things. He starts by saying that what calls the attention to him of being in the world, is that he is a curious being. He also states that in order to understand the others he must create in himself the virtue of tolerance, with this he can learn different things with different people, understand their point of views and more. Also he states that this virtue is a duty, by this he means we must all develop it to get through life. Another point he mentions was the critical understanding of education, how literacy is so important and how he has had a strong experience with the adult literacy. By literacy Paulo means analyzing, critical thinking, the ability to read and write and much more.  A way to solve this is to propose a different way of teaching and thinking to the teachers, so they can work differently with the students. On the topic of language and power he says that it is impossible to think of language without thinking of ideology and power. He thinks it’s necessary for the teacher to be democratic and tolerant, to explain the students that their way of speaking is as beautiful as the others and that they have the right to speak like this. But he also states that for the students to have a voice in today’s world, they need to know the dominant syntax. Otherwise they would become the oppressed, the poor; the lacking of knowledge. In other words, the more you know the better. He concludes his interview by saying that he always changes; that in fact he changes every day, but one thing he never changed was the central nucleus of his thoughts.

Works Cited: http://davidwees.com/content/paulo-freire-reflects-his-life/