Freirean dialogues of yesterday and today

Abstract

Starting from Paulo Freire’s texts, this article features dialogues - understood as controversies, arguments, enrichments —about liberation theology, the development theory, marxism, modern pedagogy, Lenin’s What to do, the role of teachers, conscience and leadership—. No doubt his thoughts can be criticized, and he undoubtedly takes on Modernity many components, defensible or questionable: the theme of consciousness, the place of scientific knowledge, the place of teachers, the nature-culture division, the reason-emotion division. But none of this diminishes his merit of having theoretically debated and rehearsed —as praxis— a pedagogical relationship alternative and opposite to the traditional. Which means that changes in education, even in the case of a revolution like the freirean, and even when it has undermined the bases of modern education, cannot turn a totality for another totality, but instead contain new and old elements; some of them must be discarded, but others will endure, because if they are adequate, or necessary, or incomplete and open to new transformations, they transcend an era.