Freire’s Critical Pedagogy: Summary and Conclusions

Abstract

In the final chapter, we highlight the implications of Freire’s work for critical pedagogy. This closing discussion is intended to provide educators with the knowledge to dismantle the various inequities reproduced through schools. Any coherent argument advocating major social change must also provide a moral foundation to justify that transformation. Freire chose neo-Marxist and/or Praxis Marxist analytical techniques because they provide a moral framework for an attack on functional education and its ideological implications. If there is one central tenet of Praxis Marxism clearly reflected in Freire’s work it is this: Marxism is preeminently a body of thought which is uncompromising in its rejection of all forms of human alienation, exploitation, oppression, and injustice, regardless of the type of society—bourgeois or socialist—in which these phenomena occur. This chapter concludes by offering some examples of how teachers might apply Freire’s ideas in contemporary classroom situations.