Paulo Freire | serpentinegalleries.org
(Editor’s note: The year 2021 marks the centennial of radical Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997), whose theories about literacy revolutionized the globe. We anticipate further commentary on Freire as the year continues.)
When Guiomar Albuquerque was 13 years old, she began to teach fishermen in the
Ilha do Maruim (Mosquito Island)
favela of Olinda how to read and write. A top student in the seventh grade of the local parochial school, Guiomar already understood that literacy is a passport, not a birthright. It was 1984. She had watched her father struggle to sign his name so he could vote in the upcoming elections, the first in twenty years. The generals who had ruled Brazil since 1964 were still in power. Guiomar got a monitor’s job in the Brazilian Literacy Movement (MOBRAL), the dictatorship’s answer to the exiled Paulo Freire’s attempt to include the voiceless masses in the political life of the country. She also volun