Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Paulo Freire (1921-1997), born in Recife in northeastern Brazil, developed his pedagogical theory out of direct literacy work with impoverished rural and urban adults during the early 1960s, most famously the 1963 Angicos literacy program in Rio Grande do Norte, where, according to widely cited (if later contested in its precise figures) accounts, some three hundred sugarcane workers were taught to read and write in about forty-five days using a method built around "generative words" drawn from workers' own vocabulary and lived experience rather than externally imposed primers. This work, conducted under Brazil's National Literacy Program launched under President João Goulart, was cut short by the military coup of April 1, 1964, after which Freire was imprisoned briefly and then exiled, spending time in Bolivia and, from 1964 to 1969, in Chile, where he worked with the Chilean Agrarian Reform Corporation and completed the manuscript of his most influential book.