Literacy: Reading the Word and the World

To misunderstand Freire's humanism as mysticism is closed mindedness of the worst kind. Freire's ideas in this book are crucial for understanding literacy in our context. His educational approach is based on an understanding of communication that reflects Bakhtin's diaologics, an understanding of the relationship between form and content that many of the participants in our current media sphere could learn from, and a basic investment in the value of human beings that are necessary for our age of such wide experiential differences. At it's core, Freire argues that our reading of the world is preceded by our writing of the world. As long as one is willing to see the world as already made rhetorical by our experiences of ideology, this approach can connect students, teachers, and regular folks (heh heh) to each other in a common concern of self-empowerment. Bottom line is, if you see education as a process of learning to conform, Freire is not for you. If, however, you see in education the truly remarkable capacity of self-empowerment, you will not find a clearer and more humane voice than Freire's. If that counts as mysticism it's news to me.