Cartas a Cristina

by Paulo Freire

CARTAS A CRISTINA

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published June 19, 1996

About the author

The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire is among most the influential educational thinkers of the late 20th century. Born in Recife, Brazil, on September 19, 1921, Freire died of heart failure in Sao Paulo, Brazil on May 2, 1997. After a brief career as a lawyer, he taught Portuguese in secondary schools from 1941-1947. He subsequently became active in adult education and workers' training, and became the first Director of the Department of Cultural Extension of the University of Recife (1961-1964).

Freire quickly gained international recognition for his experiences in literacy training in Northeastern Brazil. Following the military coup d'etat of 1964, he was jailed by the new government and eventually forced into a political exile that lasted fifteen-years.

In 1969 he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and then moved to Geneva, Switzerland where he assumed the role of special educational adviser to the World Congress of Churches. He returned to Brazil in 1979.

Freire's most well known work is Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). Throughout this and subsequent books, he argues for system of education that emphasizes learning as an act of culture and freedom. He is most well known for concepts such as "Banking" Education, in which passive learners have pre-selected knowledge deposited in their minds; "Conscientization", a process by which the learner advances towards critical consciousness; the "Culture of Silence", in which dominated individuals lose the means by which to critically respond to the culture that is forced on them by a dominant culture. Other important concepts developed by Freire include: "Dialectic", "Empowerment", "Generative Themes/Words", "Humanization", "Liberatory Education", "Mystification", "Praxis", " Problematization", and "Transformation of the World".

http://www.education.miami.edu/ep/con...

Reviews

[Drick · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who are students of Paulo Freire's work, this series of letters by Freire to his grand niece are a summary of this major thoughts, as well as a look at his personal life, especially growing up in Northern Brazil. I found these letter to be refreshingly clear and personal. They are a series of 18 letters Freire writes near the end of his life to Cristina, his grand niece. He covers politics, liberatory peadagogy, the death of his father, growing up hungry, the importance of language, his love of reading, the balance between freedom and authority, the linking of democracy and socialism and so much more. As an avid student of Freire, I find these letters a joy to read.

March 2016
I reread this book recently, and find it not only shares personal stories of Freire's life but also refreshing views on life in Brazil through the lens of some of his key concepts like conscientization, utopia, reading the word, democracy and the like. It is a book that sees Freire "in context" and how he seeks to implement his ideas in his native Brazil

[richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

about taching adults. Adult education is transformation and revolution. Good.

[Sekar Writes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Letters to Cristina alongside Pedagogy of the Oppressed deepened my understanding of Paulo Freire. Through letters to his niece, he shares his childhood in Northern Brazil, the evolution of his thinking, and the lived experiences behind concepts like conscientization and utopia.

At times it reads like a memoir, and at other times like a reflection on education as a political and ethical practice.

[Rolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feels very much like a continuation of Freire’s later 90s work. I say that in that it isn’t as consistently packed with new insight as his earlier texts, but still contains a lot of extensions of his early thought and thoughtful articulations of his key ideas to be worth reading.

[Dodie · Rating 3 out of 5]

semakin mengenal freire...

[Raluca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eseuri cu multe idei actuale despre rolul educatiei in formarea gandirii critice si in a impinge schimbari in societate.