I know Freire from reading the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which I read for a class when obtaining my undergraduate degree. From then, I was fascinated with how he viewed the world concerning education and the disenfranchised. This book gave me that insight, and I know it will be something I will read more than once because of the amount of information provided about this innovative thinker.

I struggled with this book and like other readers I also skipped through sections. I was left wondering what attracted me to the book in the first place. I don't think this book is my style or taste sorry.

I first learned about Paulo Freire in college when I was learning about liberation theology, education and social justice. An incredible amount of thought and research went into the writing of this book by Walter Omar Kohan and the translators Jason Wozniak and Samuel D. Rocha. We gain incredible insight into the translation process which is fascinating in it's own right (why certain words were chosen, comments about the title, etc.) I really liked the comparisons made to other philosophers such as Socrates and Foucault (who I don't know a lot about). The book is divided into five "principles" 1) Life 2)Equality 3) Love 4) Errantry (to wander and to err) and 5) Childhood. The principles are meant to open up ways to "think and live an educative life" Through the sharing of writings and personal letters of Freire as well as other research and interviews, we get a sense of Paulo's life (so a philosophical biography is a great description). After reading this I felt I understood more about his philosophies and about him as a person.

I particularly liked the section at the end, Kohan invites the reader to put these theories into practice by encouraging us to live each of the principles during our 5 day work week. Freire himself was a believer in turning theory into practice by being in the lived world and imagining possible futures. It reminded me of the current popular theory of Growth/Fixed Mindset in terms of learning. His views on the educator as not being the "all knowing expert" but rather to "search out appropriate paths for the learner to travel" really resonated with me. One of the most important concepts Freire promotes is the importance of questioning and the need to question our questioning.

This book not only helped me more fully understand Paulo Freire, but it was thought-provoking and enabled me to reflect on what it means to be a life-long learner and educator/parent. I highly recommend this book.

Paulo Freire: A Philosophical Biography is a rich and detailed exploration of the genealogy of Freire's thinking and the ways in which Freire's seminal work has influenced philosophical and political movements, offering an analysis of how this work might be developed for the future. Kohan explores Freire's philosophy of education, which balanced traditional ethical and spiritual concerns with contemporary ideas and drew upon Christian and Hegelian-Marxist political thought and insights from existentialism and psychoanalysis. The impact of Freire's work and legacies are considered, drawing from his emphasis on the need for praxis to bring about real and progressive change.

Today Paulo Freire is in the middle of a fierce ideological dispute. But this is not a book about Paulo Freire's ideology or party politics. Here, politics does not understand what is done within the logic of the representative democratic system, but rather, in a broader sense, the way in which power is exercised in the relationships established with others and others in a social fabric and, more specifically, the ways to exercise power in teaching and learning. Paulo Freire helps us to think about the possibilities of philosophy in very close connection with education and politics. And it is in this sense that he is a philosopher: by the way he makes his life a philosophical problem and his philosophy an existential question in the search for a world without oppressors and oppressed.

In this context, the book is built around five principles inspired by Paulo Freire's life:
1. Life - ”a political education is a philosophical education. In this principle, life and philosophy, education, school, and thinking are all intertwined.”
2. Equality - ”in terms of what a life can be, all lives are equal, all lives have the life potential, not a single life is superior to another life.”
3. Love - ”to educate is an act of love." "The more you love, the more you love”. The more you educate, the more you love. By loving more, you educate more.”
4. Errantry - ”an educator is someone who walks, wanders, displaces themselves. Without a final destination, they create the conditions to encounter those who are outside — in the present, with presence. The educator wanders the world to show it that it can always be different than it is.”
5. Childhood - "childhood is not something to be educated; it is something that educates. In a political education, one does not only or above all try to form the child without first being attentive to the child, to listen, to care, to keep alive, to live with."

The work also features two revealing interviews, one with Paulo Freire's youngest son, Lutgardes Costa Freire, and the other with educator and friend Esther Pilar Grossi; in addition to an appendix that deals with Paulo Freire's relationship with philosophy with children. Freire continues to be an important cog in the pedagogy wheel to this day, and Kohan has written an extensive, authoritative biography full of information and fascination. It's accessible, well written and covers many of the intertwining topics that were close to Freire's heart. A compelling and richly detailed read. Highly recommended.

This was not what I expected when I asked to review the book. I expected more of an account and personal explanation of Friere's work. I found myself skipping through sections and eventually jumping to the end.

Paulo Freire was one of the most important neo-Marxists of the 20th century who did more to pollute education practices worldwide than any person in history so I felt that I should invest my time by digging deeper into his pedagogical philosophy. Boy, was that a big mistake. Walter Kohan has produced a new book most of which you should skip. If you do decide to purchase this book skip its long and oppressive forward and go directly to chapters one and two which are worth reading. Then turn to the end (the Epilogue) and read the short summary of Freire's ideas on love, errantry, and childhood -- this is all you will need to know about these three topics.

Paulo Freire saw a world made up of only the oppressed and their oppressors that lacked equality. Amazingly, unlike Joseph Jacotot, a French philosopher of education who died in 1840, Freire did not believe that all men possessed equal intellectual capacity but rather that all men were different and this was the root cause of inequality that had to be ameliorated by teachers treating their students as equals and by learning as much from their pupils as their pupils did from them. Freire also believed that people should be completely free to learn what they wanted to learn and many other loopy ideas.

I came to this book with a working knowledge of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and a general interest in the ideas of Freire, but not with extensive academic background in the area.

This book is thoughtful, clearly written, and motivates you to dig deeper into the ideas of Freire. This is particularly important because it feels that Freire has been reduced to a very narrow space over the last few decades. However this book compellingly explains the vastness of the work of Freire, his intellectual connections and the evolution of his thought over the course of his life. It has made me want to explore more and go back to his work beyond Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

For a non-academic reader, the structure of the book works well, and is very accessible. As a Spanish and Portuguese speaker, I appreciated the author’s careful approach around translation.

I think the ideas of Freire feel particularly important today and I added the book to the social action reading list I publish each year: https://blog.oxfordhub.org/our-social-action-reading-list-for-2021-cbbc3942475c