Paulo Freire (1921-1997) Brazilian educational philosopher

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Jul 16, 2026, 12:54:56 PM (7 days ago) Jul 16

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Paulo Freire (1921-1997) Brazilian educational philosopher

A weekly series of quotes from thinkers about how to help people help themselves

David Ellerman

Jul 16

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Introduction

The quotations from Paulo Freire are organized around five themes. The setting is the helper-doer relationship, e.g., the teacher-student, manager-worker, doctor-patient, social worker-client, consultant-client, psychotherapist-client, counselor-counselee, development assistance organization-client country relationships.

Theme 1: Starting From Where the Doers Are

A utopian social engineering approach tries to impose a clean model solution where, if necessary, the old solution is wiped away to make room for the new. To use a building metaphor, the old building is torn down to create a cleared space, a tabula rasa, upon which the new model building can be constructed. There is no need to take the characteristics of the old building into account—other than what is required to tear it down. The alternative non-utopian incremental approach would be to repair one part of the building at a time—which over time can still completely rebuild the building. Rebuilding the old, rather than destroying it to engineer a new model from the cleaned slate, is one way of introducing the theme of “starting from where the doers are.” For the helpers to help the doers help themselves, the helpers have to design their assistance taking into account the current starting point of the doers, not an imaginary clean slate.

In contrast with the antidialogical and non-communicative “deposits” of the banking method of education, the program content of the problem-posing method—dialogical par excellence—is constituted and organized by the students’ view of the world, where their own generative themes are found. (Freire 1970, 101)

Theme 2: Seeing Through the Doers’ Eyes

Since the goal is for the doers to help themselves, any assistance provided by the helpers needs to see the situation through the doers’ eyes. The doers’ actions will be guided by their knowledge, conceptual framework, values, and worldview, not those of the helpers. The strategy of help used by the helpers needs to be based on an empathetic understanding of the doers’ viewpoint in order to be effective.

I repeat: the investigation of thematics involves the investigation of the people’s thinking-thinking which occurs only in and among men together seeking out reality. I cannot think for others or without others, nor can others think for me. (Freire 1970, 100)

Theme 3: Helper Cannot Impose Change on Doers

This is the counter-thesis to the direct or social engineering approach. Transformative change comes from the internally motivated self-activities of the doers. Carrots and sticks (e.g., aid conditionalities) used by the “helpers” will distort the own-motivation of the doers, externalize their locus of causality, and may produce conforming surface behavior and cunning resistance rather than transformation.

Unfortunately, those who espouse the cause of liberation are themselves surrounded and influenced by the climate which generates the banking concept, and often do not perceive its true significance or its dehumanizing power. (Freire 1970, 66)

Theme 4: Help as Benevolence is Ineffective

Autonomy-compatible assistance is neither an imposition (theme 3) nor a gift (theme 4). Benevolent charity helps people, but it does not help people help themselves. It promotes dependency, not autonomy. The helpers are self-satisfied that their charity is helping others, but the doers are in the humiliating and degrading position of not helping themselves with the resulting resentment and thwarted self-reliance.

[O]ppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients.” They are treated as individual cases, as marginal men who deviate from the general configuration of a “good, organized, and just” society. (Freire 1970, 60)

Theme 5: Doers in the Driver’s Seat

This central theme is simply a restatement of the goal of the assistance, to have the doers helping themselves. “Being in the driver’s seat” is the metaphor for autonomous self-activity. The car metaphor comports well with the other four themes. The car must: (1) start its journey from where doer-driver is, (2) the vision of the road ahead is from the vantage point of the driver, (3) it would be folly for guides (or “backseat drivers”) to grab the steering wheel and try to drive, and (4) being driven by someone else weakens self-reliance and self-esteem.

Authentic liberation-the process of humanization-is not another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men upon their world in order to transform it. Those truly committed to the cause of liberation can accept neither the mechanistic concept of consciousness as an empty vessel to be filled, nor the use of banking methods of domination (propaganda, slogans---deposits) in the name of liberation. (Freire 1970, 66)

References

Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum.

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