Abstracts Language, Literature, and Linguistic

O conceito de liberdade em Paulo Freire: implicações filosófico-pedagógicas para o trabalho escolar em educação linguística

by Carolina Fabricia Narciso

Abstract: This research aimed to investigate, anchored in historical-dialectical materialism, the conception of freedom in Paulo Freire's work. Starting from the problem of freedom in the contemporary context, we outline the notion of freedom in vogue by the capitalist system, associated with the liberal and neoliberal paradigm, as a starting point. Likewise, we defend a conception of freedom as the point of arrival of the revolutionary process and aligned with Marxian theory. As objects of analysis, we took the most elementary publications of Freire's work: Education as a Practice of Freedom (1996 [1965]), Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1987 [1968]), Pedagogy of Hope: a reunion with the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2013 [1992]) and Pedagogy of Autonomy (2002 [1996]). Analyzing such works, we were able to reveal the existentialist phenomenology as the main, but not the only, philosophical foundation of Freire's work. In the same way, we present the conception of freedom in Freire's work in correlation with aspects of the formation/gathering of conscience as a process of knowledge of the oppressive reality, but linked to the daily life of the capitalist system; as well as the notion of freedom taken as the autonomy of individuals, linked to the immediate context of the teaching and learning process, assuming a notion of freedom as critical citizen participation in democracy. Finally, we emphasize that Freire's work can deepen - with its contributions and limitations - the debate on linguistic education and the fundamental principles that the field must consider in the design of training projects that seek to overcome the adaptive educational model in vogue in the country. In this direction, we highlight as implications for the school work with language, of taking the notion of freedom in Freire's work, two assumptions. The first of them, assuming that a notion of freedom as participation is outlined in Freire's work, we argue that, as much as it is constrained by a critical pedagogical position when it assumes the struggle for a training project at the service of the education of workers, which tries to overcome the traditional dictates of banking education that operated in the period of military dictatorship, a notion of freedom strictly linked to the pedagogical process is established, in which it starts from the perspective of a social practice limited to the daily life of students, in the form of autonomy and freedom of the learner. The second, listing the notion of social practice as a fundamental element in the debate on the development of language teaching projects, we defend the notion of freedom as participation (which although critical) can result, as an implication for school work, (i) in the association with the neoliberal school education paradigm, according to which the needs of students are reduced to those that are strictly linked to the pragmatism of everyday life produced by capital; (ii) the risk, also, in what concerns the teaching of written language, of falling back into the social uses of writing for…