In the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire (1968) released to the world his theory, which would turn difficulties into possibilities. He used to affirm, on his rightful thinking, that human beings are not simply located in the world, but they in fact interact with this world and with other human beings. People interfere on the historical, social and cultural world. They create and recreate the world at the same time as they are created and recreated by it. For this, it is fundamental, according to Freire, to comprehend the world, to know about the process of acting, to know the inventory of findings and the sight of the ends of the actions of different cultures and societies. In this dialectic process of knowing and intervening, humans beings transform life into existence, and support into world, as they exert and improve their capacities of reflecting, evaluating, programming, investigating, transforming. Upon making a balance of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in the 1990s, Freire (2003) restates that changes are possible because of humans’ capacity of being programmed to learn, being conditioned by the reality, but not determined by it. Humans are moved by their curiosity, their passions for knowing, on an ontological vocation for humanization, for becoming more. Mas, just as there is humanization, dehumanization is also a historical possibility. Dehumanization presents itself as a distortion of the “being more”. The History that has been built by women and men highlights many struggles towards humanization. The utopia, the dream, is what embodies the taste for freedom and hopeful life. Freire’s (1968) theory and comprehension which he offered us 50 years ago remain current and alive. In this presentation we will demonstrate key-concepts from Pedagogy of the Oppressed and its reaffirmation in Pedagogy of Hope are viewed and used in affirmative action policies for youth and adults in Brazil, both in basic education and in the presence of indigenous peoples in Brazilian universities.
