Paulo Freire

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was born in Brazil on 19 September 1921 and trained as an educator and Marxist philosopher. His central work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, reframed teaching as a collaborative act rather than one-way transmission — a shift that fed into liberation theology, postcolonial education, and contemporary learning theory. The book and the framework it built became critical pedagogy's founding text, influencing literacy movements and Marxist thought across continents. By the time he died on 2 May 1997, Freire stood alongside John Dewey and Maria Montessori as one of the twentiet…