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Ana Maria Araujo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, Editors New York: Continuum, 2000. 291 pp. US$18.95 paper.
PAULO FREIRE WAS a passionate educator, one who embodied a love of humanity and commitment to social justice; and he was someone who played a significant role in my own life. I had the good fortune to take courses from him at the beginning of my graduate studies in Adult Education at the University of British Columbia (uBc). In the summer of 1984, Paulo Freire came to teach a course at UBC. It was my first master's degree course in adult education, and, at that point, I had only heard of Freire in passing. My mother had become very ill, and her health crisis was foremost in my mind as I began my graduate work. Within this context, I was oblivious to the excitement of his visit and his iconic status, and I asked him many questions. It is his grace, passion, and care that I remember from that summer as he listened deeply to my queries and responded with care and wisdom. In the following year, I had the privilege of again witnessing his dialogic approach, this time in a seminar in Recife, Brazil, his hometown. I was part of a small group of uBc students who toured Brazil studying its literacy policy and programs. Freire's ideas - that all education is political and key to achieving social justice became the foundation for my master's thesis and have stayed with me as a source of inspiration and support. He died on 2 May 1997, but his ideas remain refreshing, radical, and important.
The Paulo Freire Reader begins with a forty-four-page introduction by Anna Maria Arujo Freire (his second wife) and Donaldo Macedo (a longtime...