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Paulo Freire in the 21st Century: Education, dialogue and transformation. Peter Roberts. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. 2010. 192 pp.
This book is the most recent to be published in the Paradigm Publishers Series entitled Interventions: Education, Pliilosophy and Culture, edited by Michael Peters and Colin Lankshear. This book complements Roberts previous volume on Freire (Roberts, 2000), "but in a more selective way and with a more applied focus" (Roberts, 2010, p. vii). His inspiration comes from the fact that Paulo Freire's ideas appear to be as popular and relevant today as they ever were. Furthermore, despite Roberts' engagement with Freirean philosophy for more than twenty-five years, and while also acknowledging the weaknesses in Freire's work, he continues to "find surprises in his writings" (p. viii).
For me, as an academic visitor to the scholarly domains of educational philosophy and critical pedagogy, the tone of Roberts' book is well set through his introductory statements. I was immediately engaged with this book because I was captured by the relevance of Freire's work to my own areas of research (educational psychology with a specific focus on emotion, and adult teaching and learning). Additionally, Roberts indicates how Freire has the ability to surprise a long-term scholar. This elicited my curiosity to proceed with reading the book. I made the decision to read the book "properly", which I later discovered was a term that Roberts himself cited during his chapter on critical literacy, explaining that "proper literacy enhances peoples' control. ..enabling them to identify, understand, and to act to transform, social relations and practices in which power is structured unequally" (O'Neil, 1970, in Roberts, 2010, p. 61).
Given the significance of Paulo Freire's contribution to education, the book commences with a brief summary of Freire's life and work, and key educational ideas. The purpose and structure of the book are well delineated early in the book, so that the reader knows what to expect in each chapter. Roberts signals the content and critiques which will be encountered and uses the metaphor of himself being a f e How- traveller with Freire, on a journey through Freirean themes - this metaphor also engaging and welcoming to the reader, especially new Freirean scholars. As a fellow traveller, Roberts guides the reader on...