Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy
Andrew J. Kirkendall
The University of North Carolina Press (2010)
Reviewed by Ernesto AguilarKnown for his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed and a grand vision of popular education, Paulo Freire is revered by progressive intellectuals for his core idea that the disadvantaged could talk about their circumstances as a means of understanding their plight as well as their role in changing the situation. However, for the U.S. government during the Cold War, Freire’s ideas emerged as an attractive alternative to socialism.
The journey of Freire’s teachings from potential Ayn Rand successor to weapon of Third World anti-colonial revolutionaries is often what makes Andrew J. Kirkendall’s Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) so fascinating.
In 1959, Cuba became an incubator for revolutionary community organizers using literacy for conveying political ideology. The Cubans were tremendously successful; Cuba’s illiteracy rate nosedived and the rebellion Che Guevara helped lead was being rooted among the people. For U.S. President John F. Kennedy and the Defense Department, though, Cuba’s successes represented a threat for what others could take away, including land and wealth redistribution, Brazil, and Freire’s education and agitation tactics for adult literacy, became a billboard for innovative instruction methods for the country’s impoverished. Thus, as the author laments, the Kennedy Administration’s proxies were drawn to Freire in their battle against Castro. In this lens. Freire could be taught in a manner that emphasized personal responsibility and entrepreneurship, answers that betrayed Freire’s institutional way of teaching but which could make for a worthy sparring partner to armed revolution.
Though the Cold War may draw you in, the real attraction of the book is author’s reading of Third World rebels and their work using Freire’s teachings, as well as in Freire adjusting his teachings to particular revolutionary experiences, such as the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. Freire worked in Nicaragua, Chile and several African countries over 15 years of exile from his native Brazil. During that time, he saw many radical successes and failures. And it is perhaps fitting that Freire lived to see the demise of many military dictatorships and the emergence of democracies that engaged those he sought to teach. His joy at stepping on Cuban soil, “a place where there is no child without a school, where no one has not eaten today” Freire said, is palatable. The former Harvard instructor is ultimately a believer in transformation, and Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy offers the transformations of individuals, nations and, in the end, Freire himself.
Additionally, Kirkendall colorfully writes about the late teacher and bravely conveys the gargantuan tasks victorious revolutions face. Picture for a moment that one is the leader of a country’s popular struggle. How do you undo decades, sometimes centuries, of colonial rule and teaching; provide and expand the human services your stakeholders expect, with infrastructures that may be crumbling amid multinational business pullouts; teach people to think of themselves and their world in a different way; and keep contentious forces like the military at your side? While holding a small piece of that immense puzzle, Freire nonetheless had a front-row seat for how his piece mightily influenced all the others.
See the original review at Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy
