This website, dedicated to Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997), consists of a collection of reviews of his books and links to other pages on Freire. The books are listed in chronological order. When the book has been translated into English, the first date refers to the original publication.
The website was created by Daniel Schugurensky, Department of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT).
Review by Megan Haggerty
The book, We Make the Road by Walking, is an exceptionally enlightening and light dialogue on popular education and social change. Written as a talking book, it explores the issues of the role of the community and educator in social change, and the role of hope, dreams and visions in creating a future. It continually comes back to the value of starting with one’s knowledge and reflecting on one’s experience to create new knowledge and action. As the reader, I see both how the authors think and how their experiences have shaped their views. It is an important book to read, not only as an historical account on two streams of popular education, but as a provocative piece that forces readers to examine how they look at the world and help create social change.
The book is written as a dialogue between two famous popular educators, Paulo
Freire from Brazil, and Miles Horton from the United States, about their current
thoughts and perspectives on their life’s work in popular education. The
participants and the reader are given an opportunity to meld the two
perspectives together – thereby doing what both men believe should be the
basis of social change, that is creating new ideas and a shared vision through a
dialectical process, based on past experiences. As Freire says, it is “about
the ways I find myself in his thought” (3). They come from two contexts,
radically different, but end up with predominantly similar, supportive
conclusions. I am left asking how two men coming from radically different
contexts arrive at such similar viewpoints.
In its style as a talking book, not a theoretical debate, it is made
significantly more accessible to the average person, especially compared to
Freire’s previous works which have been criticized as difficult to grasp. It
also manifests the interrelation of books and thoughts in their lives, creating
a unity between theory (books) and practice (action) (21). This stylistic choice
is more in line with the men’s professed beliefs of starting from where the
people are, and “tying books and reading with life” (31). However, given
that a large proportion of the people that the men worked with were originally
illiterate, one wonders if Horton and Freire would have come to similar thoughts
if they themselves had been illiterate. The importance that they give books in
the formation of their thoughts slightly weakens their argument that the
illiterate, given only their experiences and not an academic framework, may
experience a similar process of conscientisation.
The title, We Make the Road by Walking, very clearly points to the underpinning
idea of their philosophies: that one must start with one’s experiences, and
that knowledge and change “grows out of what you do” (7). It is only fitting
that they start the book with autobiographical accounts of how their thoughts
were formed from their experiences as individuals in relation to their
communities. They constantly come back to the idea of respect for “organic
knowledge” or “people’s knowledge” (98), thereby acknowledging the
validity and importance of the experience of all people, regardless of their low
social status or education. They respect and trust that these communities have
the capability to change their lives through the reflection on their own
experiences and action on that reflection. However, the book does not explore
how that trust was created.
The role of the educator in this book is a complex one. They see their role as
supporting the communities and acting as a catalyst. “You have to know
something: they know something. You have to respect their knowledge, which they
don’t respect, and help them to respect their knowledge” (55). You have to
“keep out of the act, get them to act” (43). The role of the expert, then,
is only to give the information when asked, and to let the people decide the use
of that information. However, the educator can also “provoke the discovering
of need for knowing and never to impose the knowledge whose need was not yet
perceived” (66). Along with this is the ability of the educator to create a
space for this dialogue, and the possibility to see change. As Horton says, it
is much like planting seeds, (99) where one does not yet see the fruits of one’s
labours. There appears to be a continuous tension between the educator wanting
to get involved in the people’s learning, but not to impose their ideas nor
manipulate the people’s thoughts. It points back to the much needed trust that
the educator must have that people will eventually pose the questions that need
to be asked.
It is commendable the way that Horton and Freire deal with the issue of respect
and trust for the culture, while acknowledging the importance of context. They
discuss the importance of understanding the soul of the culture (131). Freire
says that as an outsider, if the vision of the educator does not match that of
the community (he gives the example of Latin American men not cooking), it’s
“not unethical to put the possibility of change on the table” (132).
However, it would be unethical to impose this idea on the people. They thereby
reiterate the importance of having values, while making sure that they do not
recreate a colonial experience, as happened historically with the imposition of
western values on communities.
One of the strengths of this book is the positive message of hope that it gives.
Both Horton and Freire believe that positive change, although difficult, is
possible. They talk about the importance of dreams and vision guiding action in
the present, using the analogy of ever higher mountains to climb (56). They also
suggest that we do not start social change from scratch, rather we find pockets
of hope that already exist. “Finding the pockets is not an intellectual
process. It’s a process of being involved” (94). At the end, I am left with
a feeling of empowerment and ability to change my world, and ideas on how to
start acting.
These themes of hope, respect, experience, vision, trust, context and action, as
touched upon above, are interwoven throughout the book. The ideas are not
separated into exclusive sections, thereby showing their interrelation, just as
thoughts and experiences are interrelated in life. This book has become one that
I will say influenced the formation of my thoughts and actions when, many years
down the road, I too write my talking book.
To cite this review:
Haggerty, Megan (2004). Review of We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, by Myles Hortan and Paulo Freire (1990), In D. Schugurensky (ed), Reviews of Paulo Freire's Books. Available at Internet URL: <http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_schugurensky/freire/mh.html> (Access date).