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Paulo Freire Quotes about Children

All Paulo Freire Quotes Children quotes Conformity Consciousness Democracy Dialogue Discipline Effort Exercise Fighting Generosity Language Learning Liberation Literature Lying Oppression Philosophy Reading Reality Reflection Revolution School Society Struggle Students Study Suffering Teaching Torture Transformation Understanding Violence
Educators need to know what happens in the world of the children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of

Educators need to know what happens in the world of the children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of their world, what they know independently of the school, and how they know it.

Paulo Freire
Dream, Children, School
Paulo Freire (2005). “Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those who Dare Teach”

The more we become able to become a child again, to keep ourselves childlike, the more we can understand that because we love the world and we are open to understanding, to comprehension, that when we kill the child in us, we are no longer.

Paulo Freire
Children, Understanding, World
Myles Horton, Paulo Freire, Brenda Bell, John Gaventa (1990). “We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change”, p.64, Temple University Press

As one might expect, authoritarianism will at times cause children and students to adopt rebellious positions, defiant of any limit, discipline, or authority. But it will also lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom.

Paulo Freire
Children, Self, Discipline
Paulo Freire (2005). “Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those who Dare Teach”

The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression. As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority.

Paulo Freire
Children, Philosophy, Educational
Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.110, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Finally, it is important to make it clear that imagination is not an exercise for those detached from reality, those who live in the air. On the contrary, when we imagine something, we do it necessarily conditioned by a lack in our concrete reality. When children imagine free and happy schools, it is because their real schools deny them freedom and happiness.

Paulo Freire
Children, Real, School

I have never said, as is sometimes believed, or even suggested that lower-class children should not learn the so-called educated norm of the Portuguese language of Brazil. What I have said is that the problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power.

Paulo Freire
Children, Class, Society
Paulo Freire (2005). “Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those who Dare Teach”

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