EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, 46: 376–399, 2010Copyright C! American Educational Studies AssociationISSN: 0013-1946 print / 1532-6993 onlineDOI: 10.1080/00131941003782429

ARTICLES

Sitting in the Waiting Room: Paulo Freireand the Critical Turn in the Field

of Education

Isaac Gottesman

UW College of Education

Although it is commonly assumed that Paulo Freire was widely influential in the fieldof education in the United States immediately upon publication of his classic work,Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in 1970, the historical evidence indicates otherwise. Infact, Freire’s work only began to gain wide reception in the field in the mid- and late1980s. In the process of charting a new history of the reception of Freire’s work in thefield, this historical article illuminates contemporary issues with the use of Freire’sideas in educational conversations about social structure and agency. In particular, thearticle seeks to renew a close, contextual read of Freire’s texts, especially Pedagogyof the Oppressed, and invigorate discussion about Freire’s primary claim—thateducation must be the central feature of building movements for radical socialchange. Similarly, the article seeks to renew attention to the structural concerns thatinitiated the turn towards critical Marxist scholarship in the field—concerns aboutthe relationship between school and society in the United States that the initial waveof critical scholars knew must be addressed before fully engaging ideas about theways in which schools may participate in the push for social change.

On October 22, 1970, The New York Review of Books published an impassionedletter to the editor by Jonathan Kozol, urging readers to engage the ideas of

Correspondence should be addressed to Isaac Gottesman, Educational Leadership and Policy Stud-ies, UW College of Education, Educational Leadership and Poicy Studies, Seattle, WA 98195-3600.E-mail: isaacg@uw.edu

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Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Kozol penned the powerfully titled “ComingUp For Freire,” in reaction to Ivan Illich’s July 2, 1970 essay, “Why We MustAbolish Schooling,” which, in addition to eventually becoming the first chapterof Deschooling Society (Illich 1971), offered two praising paragraphs of Freire’swork. Kozol seized this opportunity. “I am writing to you,” wrote Kozol:

because I believe Freire’s ideas to be directly relevant to the struggles we face inthe United States at the present time, and in areas far less mechanical and far moreuniversal than basic literacy alone. In the past year Freire has addressed himself oftento an analysis of the degrading qualities of public education in the United States and,while he has been obliged to abstain from direct political involvement during hisvisit here, he has engaged in extensive conversation with many of us concerning thenature of the problems we now face. (Kozol 1970, 53–54)

Although the letter appeared prior to the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed(Freire 1970b), Kozol let readers know that the book was coming out soon, evennaming Herder and Herder as the press and November as the anticipated month ofpublication. And when Pedagogy of the Oppressed was finally published, Kozol,along with Illich, was one of two endorsers on its cover—”Brilliant methodologyof a highly charged and politically provocative character.”1

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b) quickly garnered attention from abroad audience. It received favorable reviews in a range of publications, includingthe new radical journal Social Policy (Berube 1971), the widely read SaturdayReview (Harman 1971), the Catholic journal Momentum (Elford 1971), and theprestigious journal Science (Maccoby 1971). It also had a documented impact onindividual activists. Miss Theressa Hoover, an African American activist and ChiefExecutive of the National Women’s Program of the United Methodist Church,was so moved by the book that she titled her 1971 commencement address forGarrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, “To Speak a True Word,” atitle advertised to the audience as being explicitly taken from Pedagogy of theOppressed (Chicago Defender 1971).

By 1972, Freire’s work had reached a sufficiently wide audience that he waseven receiving effusive praise in the Washington Post. “It is fitting that Freire isbecoming known in the United States,” wrote the noted journalist and activistColman McCarthy (1972).

Little oppression is found here in comparison with the severity of northeast Brazil,but we share a common culture of silence. Wealth, not poverty, is making objectsout of most of us: who can count of, let alone actively resist, all the outrages? Freirespeaks of an ‘invisible war’ against the common citizens. He referred to Brazil butthe front lines are here too. (McCarthy 1972)

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THE HISTORICAL QUESTION

Today, Paulo Freire is invoked, discussed, and cited in a wide range of scholarshipin the field of education in the United States, from literacy education to schoolreform. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b), his classic work, is a mainstayin education courses across the country. Although John Dewey is likely the mostrecognized scholar in the field of education, Paulo Freire is probably not far behind.For radical education scholars in particular, Freire has become the touchstone voicein the field—scholarship espousing social justice is almost always in conversationwith his critical educational approach.

Despite Freire’s tremendous impact on thinking about education in the UnitedStates, no work has yet offered a sustained examination of the history of hisrelationship with the field of education in the United States.2 Significantly, it is thusunclear when scholars in the United States began engaging Freire’s work, and why.

In light of its popularity among prominent educational activists like Kozol inthe early and mid-1970s, it is unsurprising that the conventional wisdom in thefield of education is that Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b) was widelyread and influential in educational scholarship immediately upon publication (e.g.Leonardo 2004). Similarly, it is unsurprising that critical educational scholars,many of whom look to Freire for conceptual backing and political guidance, alsoclaim Pedagogy of the Oppressed as the key textual progenitor of the turn towardscritical scholarship in the field and the rise of critical educational studies (e.g.Giroux 2008, Leonardo 2004.).

However, as this historical article details, this popular narrative bears littleresemblance to the actual reception of Freire’s scholarship or to the developmentof critical educational studies. In fact, Freire and Pedagogy of the Oppressed(1970b) did not become widely engaged in the field until the mid-to-late 1980s, adecade and a half after the initial publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, anda few years after the critical turn was in full swing.

Significantly, this historical correction illuminates contemporary issues sur-rounding the field’s use of Freire’s ideas, particularly with regard to the relation-ship between social structure and agency. Thus, in addition to contributing to thehistorical understanding of Freire and the critical turn in the field of education,this article seeks to renew a close, contextual read of Freire’s texts, especially Ped-agogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b), and invigorate discussion about Freire’sprimary claim—that education must be the central feature of building movementsfor radical social change. Similarly, the article seeks to renew attention to the struc-tural concerns that initiated the turn towards critical Marxist scholarship in thefield—concerns about the relationship between school and society in the UnitedStates that the initial wave of critical scholars knew must be addressed before fullyengaging ideas about the ways in which schools may participate in the push forsocial change.

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This article begins its examination of Freire’s reception in the United Stateswith a brief analysis of his intellectual turn to the Marxist tradition in the late1960s, which framed his critical approach in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire1970b). With the aid of archival research, the article then inquiries into Freire’stime at Harvard in 1969–1970, which initiated his institutional relationship with thefield and marks the period of his first scholarly publications for English-speakingaudiences. From here, the article charts Freire’s reception in the field’s literature inthe 1970s and ‘80s, with particular attention paid to Harvard Educational Review(HER), one of the central journals in the field and one that has long publishedradical and critical educational scholarship, including Freire’s first two articlesfor a US education journal in 1970. This is followed by a discussion of the turnto critical scholarship in the field and Freire’s position in that turn. The articleconcludes with a reflection on how a historical approach to Freire illuminatesproblems and possibilities of the contemporary use of Freire’s ideas in the field.

FREIRE AND THE MARXIST TRADITION

It was while in exile in Chile (1964–1969), several years after he had alreadymade a name for himself in Latin American radical education circles, that Freirebegan to forge a relationship with the United States.3 It was also during this timethat Freire wrote his classic work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b).Significantly, although Pedagogy of the Oppressed drew on Freire’s earlier radicaleducational experiences in Brazil, it was grounded in the even more radicalizingexperience and context of working in exile within a revolutionary Marxist milieu.

As John Holst (2006) has convincingly documented, while in Chile, Freirebecame thoroughly engrossed in Marxist revolutionary thought, which in the1960s and ‘70s shaped the ideas of radicals and liberation movements across theglobe, including in Latin America (Castaneda 1993; Prashad 2007). Freire’s workof the period, including Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970b), which heavily citedthe work of V. I. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Che Guevara, and Regis Debray, wasclearly participating in a vibrant conversation about leadership and revolutionarymovement-building that was central to the past century of Marxist thought.

Although the revolutionary Marxist tradition shaped Freire’s political advocacy,it is the critical Marxist tradition that underpinned his philosophical approach toeducation and revolutionary movement-building. Emerging in the left-wing of thecommunist movement during the interwar period (e.g. Georg Lukacs, Karl Korsch,Ernst Bloch, Antonio Gramsci, and those associated with the Frankfurt School) inopposition to the perceived mechanistic materialism and economic determinismdominant within the Communist Party, the critical Marxist tradition, often referredto as Western Marxism, put great weight on dialectical thought, consciousness,historical understanding, ideology, and emancipation (Anderson 1976; Bronner

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2002; Jay 1984). Although many affiliated with the tradition, such as Gramsci andLukacs, also aligned with Marxism’s revolutionary tendencies, critical Marxistsprimarily looked to Marx, especially his early works, as a guide for philosophicalinquiry into the nature of human agency within a capitalist social order, instead ofto Marx simply as a guide in constructing a political roadmap for the acquisitionof state power and global eradication of capitalism. As political theorist StephenEric Bronner has noted about this critical Marxist tradition:

Its objective is to foster reflexivity, a capacity for fantasy, and a new basis for praxisin an increasingly alienated world. Critical theory, in this way, stands diametricallyopposed to economic determinism and any stage theory of history. It originally soughtto examine the various “meditations” between base and superstructure. It engaged ina revision of Marxian categories and an anachronistic theory of revolution in order toexpose what inhibited revolutionary practice and its emancipatory outcome. Criticaltheory wished to push beyond the stultifying dogma and collectivism of what becameknown as “actually existing socialism”. The ideological and institutional frameworkof oppression was always thrust to the forefront and made the target of attack.(Bronner 2002, 5)

Critical theory marked a turn in Marxist thought towards a descriptive, explanatory,and normative analysis of the ideas and structures that shape the relationshipbetween the individual and society.

In the 1960s, many radicals mobilizing against an expanding capitalist socialorder returned to the critical Marxist tradition in an effort to rescue Marxian critiquefrom the crude economism still dominant within the Soviet Bloc (Jay 1984). Asscholars such as Diana Cohen (1998), Rich Gibson (1994), and Paul Taylor (1993)have noted, Freire participated in this reemergence, with particular influence on hiswork coming from affiliates of the humanist Praxis group in Yugoslavia (e.g. GajoPetrovic), the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory (e.g. Max Horkheimer,Herbert Marcuse, and Eric Fromm), and a range of independent socialist humanists(e.g., Karl Kosik and Lucian Goldmann).4

As Denis Goulet noted in 1973 about Freire’s 1965 book, Education as thePractice of Freedom:5

Were the piece to be written today, I feel certain that its title would become ‘Educationas the Praxis of Liberation’. For although Freire’s earlier work does view action aspraxis, the precise symbiosis between reflective action and critical theorizing isthe fruit of later works, especially Cultural Action for Freedom and Pedagogy of theOppressed. Similarly, Freire’s notion of freedom has always been dynamic and rootedin the historical process by which the oppressed struggle unremittingly to “extroject”(the term is his) the slave consciousness which oppressors have “interjected” intothe deepest recess of their being. Yet in recent years Freire has grown ever moreattentive to the special oppression masked by the forms of democratic “freedom” orcivil “liberty.” Accordingly, he now emphasizes liberation as being both a dynamic

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activity and the partial conquest of those engaged in a dialogical education. (Goulet1973, vii–viii)

By the end of the 1960s, Freire’s critical theorizing and more nuanced emphasison liberation was philosophically grounded in the critical Marxist tradition.

Following this tradition, Freire’s conceptualization of what it means to becritical emerges out of the ontological position that there is an objective realitythat is created and can thus be transformed by humans: Dehumanization is nota historical fact. “Just as objective social reality exists not by chance, but as aproduct of human action,” wrote Freire (1970b, 36), “so it is not transformedby chance. If humankind produce social reality (which in the “inversion of thepraxis” turns back upon them and conditions them) then transforming that realityis an historical task, a task for humanity.” Once objective reality is acknowledged,dehumanization can be recognized or unveiled, reflected upon, and acted against.This is reflected in Freire’s oft cited definition of “praxis: reflection and actionupon the world in order to transform it” (36).

For Freire, praxis, which he often refers to as a “critical intervention”, musttake place between the oppressed and those in solidarity with the oppressed. Thisis because those of the oppressor class who are in solidarity with the oppressedare uniquely in position to help the oppressed recognize the objective realityof dehumanization. Thus, although only the oppressed can most fully understandtheir oppression and, therefore, must be the historical force of their own liberation,dehumanization is so internalized among the oppressed through oppression that itis difficult for the oppressed to recognize that dehumanization is not an historicaland unchangeable fact.

The pedagogy of the oppressed is thus a dialogue between the oppressed andthose in solidarity with the oppressed meant to help “the oppressed unveil the worldof oppression and through the praxis commit themselves to its transformation.”For Freire (1970b), this “co-intentional” “educational project”—both “teachersand students (leadership and people)” as subjects working to transform the worldthrough “common reflection and action” (53, 56) in a setting distinct from “sys-temic education” (40)—is essential for organizing the oppressed and creating arevolutionary theory of liberation, which must always retain an “eminently ped-agogical character” (53–54). As he wrote in the conclusion to his second HERarticle, “Cultural Action and Conscientization,” “To be authentic, revolution mustbe a continuous event, otherwise it will cease to be a revolution, and will becomesclerotic bureaucracy” (Freire 1970d, 51).

For Freire, being critical thus means recognizing oppression, acting against it,doing so in solidarity with others who seek revolutionary change, and doing socontinuously. It is this critical educational process that Pedagogy of the Oppressed(Freire 1970b) articulates as the most important feature of constructing movementsfor radical social change.

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Of course, the Marxist tradition is not the only influence on Freire’s think-ing. As his earlier writings demonstrate (e.g., Freire 1973), Freire had long en-gaged a range of philosophical ideas, including phenomenology and existentialism.Furthermore, as a scholar explicitly writing in and about a post-Colonial context,it is unsurprising that Freire’s HER articles and Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire1970b) are written from an anti-Colonial standpoint that is deeply indebted toFrantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth (1963) and Albert Memmi’s The Colonizerand The Colonized (1965). Additionally, there has always been a strong Catholicinfluence in Freire’s thinking, which is perhaps most clearly seen in his languageof love and communion and in his humanism (Elias 1976; Gibson 1994). Notably,however, although Freire had long engaged continental philosophy, by the late1960s Marxist thought was framing his continental approach (Goulet 1973; Holst2006). Also, like many anti-Colonial thinkers of the period, Fanon and Memmi,although positioning themselves variously within the Marxist tradition, heavilydrew upon Marxist thought. Finally, it was during the 1960s and early ‘70s thatMarxian thought began to become explicit in many Catholic liberation movementsin Latin America (Boff and Boff 1987). Thus, even within the Catholic influenceon Freire, a Marxist influence is also present.

It is to the Marxist tradition that Freire turned in the late 1960s to frame andarticulate his educational ideas. And, it is this intellectual and political traditionthat Freire brought with him when he came to the United States for the first time inthe late 1960s. The question is how and when scholars of education in the UnitedStates began to take notice.

COMING TO AMERICA

In 1967, upon the suggestion of Ivan Illich, Father Joseph Fitzpatrick and Mon-signor Robert Fox invited Freire, then living in exile in Chile and virtually unknownin the United States, to New York City to observe education and literacy programsthat Fox was directing in many of the city’s Puerto Rican and black communities(Freire 2006).6 This was Freire’s first visit to the United States. Just days afterleaving New York, Freire completed the first three chapters of Pedagogy of theOppressed in a two-week stretch (Freire 2006).7

Over the next couple of years, Freire continued to meet and speak with activistsin the States (Freire 2006, 131), however, not until 1969, when he took a shortappointment at the Center for Studies in Education and Development (CSED)in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, would he stay fora sustained amount of time and begin making a scholarly mark on the field ofeducation in the United States.

In 1962, CSED was formed with assistance from a Carnegie Corporation grantto study the role of education in the economic growth of developing countries, an

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objective that mirrored a broader move within US foreign policy and social scienceresearch in the late 1950s and early ‘60s toward the study of modernization (CSEDAnnual Report 1971–1972). From the beginning, CSED supported a number ofsocial scientists conducting research and, later, doing applied work with a range ofcountries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia through a variety of institutions suchas the World Bank, USAID, United Nations agencies, and national governments.Financially, the biggest boost came in 1965, when CSED began receiving moneyfrom the Ford Foundation, including significant grants in 1966, 1968, and 1970for training and research in Latin America (CSED Annual Report 1971–1972).

However, as the result of rising suspicion and resentment amongst Third Worldnations of neo-colonialist tendencies within the large-scale economic and ed-ucational modernization projects emerging out of the United States and else-where, CSED’s approach to development changed. In 1970, CSED ended theirfinal large-scale project, the Ciudad Guyana Project in Venezuela, and movedtowards working with institutions overseas only if “specifically requested by aforeign government or institution” (CSED Annual Report 1971–1972, 4). Insteadof large-scale projects, CSED moved to micro-planning, an interest in informationprocessing that privileged rational choice models of development. Students, nowarmed with problem solving skills, were trained to work in a range of positions,such as higher education projects and mass literacy projects, instead of simplynational planning offices. The intent of this shift was to increase equitable re-source and power distribution in developing nations instead of continuing downthe path of top-down development that had defined previous rich/poor nationrelationships.

In this climate of a revised vision of international educational research andengagement, CSED found an alignment of interest with Freire, whose populareducation and adult literacy work in Brazil and Chile had garnered some attentionfrom scholars of international education and adult literacy in the states. In 1969,CSED invited Freire to Cambridge for a two-year position as a Research Associate.Soon after receiving CSED’s offer, however, Freire received a competing offerfrom the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Eager to avail himself of bothopportunities, Freire negotiated a six-month appointment in Cambridge, beginningin September 1969, before going on to Switzerland in February 1970.8 While inCambridge, Freire also received financial and intellectual support as a Fellow atthe radical Center for Studies in Development and Social Change (CSDSC), “anindependent group of men and women engaged in reflective study and new waysof communicating about ‘development’ and ‘social change”’ (CSDSC brochurein Grabowski 1972, 96).

According to his appointment records, Freire came to Harvard to “work inconjunction with existing CSED staff in the design and execution of adult educationprograms,” with a special focus on “the design of the theoretical models to be used”(Recommendation For a Harvard Corporation Appointment 1969). Significantly,

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there is no evidence in the CSED archives that Freire had any involvement inthe center’s projects, including projects in Venezuela and Chile, both of whichcontained literacy components. Freire appears to have been recruited as an expertin literacy and adult education, not as an expert on the politics of Latin Americaneducational systems or on social theory.

Although brief, Freire’s stay in Cambridge was significant. In addition to teach-ing a course in the philosophy and methods of adult education (Harman 1969),Freire further networked with educational activists such as Kozol, whom he hadmet at Illich’s “Alternatives in Education” seminar in Cuernavaca, Mexico in thesummer of 1969 (Freire 1996). Additionally, Freire completed a long article forHER, his first for a US education journal, which was published in two parts, in Mayand August of 1970 (Freire 1970c, 1970d).9 Freire also oversaw the translationof Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b), which was published, for the firsttime in any language, in English in late 1970.10 The two HER articles, republishedby HER’s press in September 1970 as the short monograph Cultural Action forFreedom (1970a) and his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed introduced Freire’sideas to English speaking audiences.11

Freire’s Reception in the Field

From the 1960s through the 1980s HER was, with Teachers College Record (TCR)close behind, the central journal in the field of education for cross-field and cross-disciplinary conversations. Regularly publishing a range of work in the socialsciences and humanities, including the ideas of prominent scholars outside of thefield of education, HER was a hub for discussions of educational theory, practice,and policy. It was, thus, with good fortune that Freire’s first two articles in theUnited States were published in such a highly visible venue. Furthermore, givenhis role at CSED as a literacy expert, it was appropriate that Freire’s first HERarticle was published in a special issue on “Illiteracy in America,” which was puttogether by David Harman (Harman 1970), a former Director of the Adult LiteracyCampaign for the Ministry of Education and Culture in Israel and a doctoral studentat HGSE who helped coordinate Freire’s time in Cambridge (Harman 1969).

Harman, who had also written the review of Pedagogy of the Oppressed forSaturday Review, was not the only one in the field attracted to Freire’s ideas aboutadult literacy education. Freire’s writing received a strong reception in the journalAdult Education (Lloyd 1972), and in November 1972 Publications in ContinuingEducation and ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult Education at Syracuse publishedthe Stanley Grabowski-edited Paulo Freire: A Revolutionary Dilemma For TheAdult Educator. The first book in the United States devoted to a close examinationof Freire’s ideas, the volume contained several essays about Freire, as well asan annotated bibliography of writings by and about him. “To be sure, Freire’s

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writings are considerably different from most other writings in the field of adulteducation,” warned Grabowski in the book’s introduction:

Freire’s political and philosophical assumptions and references, his impassionedidentification with the oppressed, and his anger toward persons, systems, and situ-ations which oppress, permeate his writings and may act as barriers for some adulteducators in their attempts to understand Freire’s approach to adult education andhis potential contributions to the field of adult education. (Grabowski 1972, 2)

In the volume (Grabowski 1972), James A. Farmer Jr., Jack London, William M.Rivera, and Bruce O. Boston wrote celebratory pieces. The reception of Freire’swork in Grabowski’s edited volume, however, cut both ways. Manfred Stan-ley and William Griffith, offered strong critiques of Freire. Stanley argued thatFreire’s conception of literacy “defined as the awareness that people can make theirworld, is philosophically an insufficiently explicated legitimation of revolutionaryoriented literacy training” (Stanley 1972, 44). In a critique less generous thanStanley’s, Griffith wrote: “Freire’s criticisms of education, based primarily on hisassumptions about the relationship between teachers and students, are neither newnor particularly useful in bringing about an improvement in the process” (Griffith1972, 67).

Significantly, Stanley and Griffith’s feelings about Freire were not unusual.Outside of adult education circles, reception of Freire within educational scholar-ship was very mixed. The most established journal in the field to review Pedagogyof the Oppressed (Freire 1970b) was the Peabody Journal of Education. Althoughin many ways laudatory, at one point going so far as to suggest it as a bookthat “every American educator would do well to read,” Robert Curries’ reviewultimately concluded that “Freire is extremely naı̈ve, perhaps, in calling for therenunciation of power” (Currie 1972, 164). Similarly, although from a perspectiveon the left, activist and scholar Edgar Friedenberg, in his review for ComparativeEducation Review, argued that Freire was rather unhelpful for thinking throughsocial struggle either in the United States or in Brazil: “The Brazilian peasant,considering the oppressive climate, probably needs a Weatherman. Paolo Freireisn’t one. And the American reader intent, like Freire, on using education as asubversive activity has an array of sharper and more comprehensive sources athis disposal” (Friedenburg 1971, 380). Rena Foy, in Educational Studies, whilefinding Freire “thought provoking” also found him “often illogical and inconsis-tent”, although the review concluded on a more positive note, mentioning thatFreire’s method appears to be “effective if not altogether honest” (Foy 1971,92–93).

In HER, which did not review Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b), therewas not tempered acceptance, ambivalence, or disapproval of Freire’s work; rather,there was silence. After Harman’s laudatory introductory comments in the May

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1970 special issue on literacy a substantive engagement with Freire’s ideas doesnot appear again until an August 1977 article about literacy by Nan Elsasser andVera P. John-Steiner, which focused on the work of Freire and the then little-knownRussian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky. Furthermore, aside from Elsasser and John-Steiner’s article, a positive book review of Pedagogy in Process (Friere 1978) byHarman in February 1979, a short piece by Freire himself on his work in SaoTome and Principe in February 1981, and some positive comments about Freire’sliteracy work by Kozol in February 1982, there is virtually no conversation aboutFreire in HER until the mid- to late 1980s. Even if one scours the footnotes ofevery HER article written from the publication of Freire’s “The Adult LiteracyProcess as Cultural Action for Freedom” in May 1970 to the publication in winter1985 of Martha Montero-Sieburth’s (1985) essay review of Freire’s (1985) ThePolitics of Education—a collection of essays that included much of his work fromthe late 1960s and early 1970s, including his HER articles—the number of articles,reviews, and editorial comments that reference Freire amounts to perhaps a dozen.Tellingly, Montero-Sieburth’s (1985) essay review reads as an introduction ofFreire for HER readers.

Unlike HER, TCR initially appeared as though it might publish articles engagingFreire’s work. In February 1972, Robert Nash and Russell Agne, in an articlefocused on accountability politics, eloquently used Freire to frame their socialtheory conversation, asking:

Where in the present efflux of literature is there a voice, like Paulo Freire’s, whichgoads educators to be accountable to the oppressed peoples of the world? Whereare we being urged to apply Freire’s concept of “praxis”, which directs us to helpour students to reflect upon the social, political, and economic contradictions in theculture and to take a systematic political action against the oppressive power blocs?(Nash and Agne 1972, 367)

The answer, apparently, was not TCR. Maxine Greene, who put together a panelon Freire for the 1972 American Educational Studies Association annual meeting(Grabowski 1972), was certainly a champion of Freire’s work, but the engagementin her essays was limited to a few sentences of commentary, rather than an in-depth exploration of ideas (Greene 1971, 1973, 1978). And aside from her essays,and another piece by Nash (with Robert Griffin) in a 1977 essay review of abook by Carl Rogers, TCR has virtually no referencing or discussion of Freire. Infact, the first substantive engagement with Freire in TCR, after Nash and Agnes’s,is a fall 1980 C. A. Bowers’ review of a book by Manfred Stanley (Bowers1980). Stanley, who had published a piece in the Grabowski edited collection in1972, remained critical of Freire in his book. Bowers, who remains one of Freire’sstrongest critics, offered solidarity with Stanley’s critique in his review. TCR neverreviewed Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970b).

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The relative silence on Freire was present in other prominent journals, as well.Educational Theory, for instance, arguably the central philosophy and theoryjournal in the field, did not publish a review of Pedagogy of the Oppressed untilfall 1974 (Singer 1974). And not until the summer 1978 issue was there anothersubstantive discussion of Freire’s work (Small 1978). The American EducationalResearch Journal did not publish a substantive mention of Freire until 1992(Smyth 1992), and in Educational Researcher, the first article to substantivelyengage Freire’s ideas was not published until 1993 (Greene 1993).

A search limited to the 74 education journals hosted by JSTOR, using the searchterm Freire and limiting to an article, review, or editorial makes the dramatic delayin the field’s reception of Freire’s work more clear. For the years 1970–1974, thereare 52 entries. From 1975–1979, there are 99. From 1980–1984, there are 135.Then, from 1985–1989, there is a dramatic jump to 232. And from 1990–1994,there is another dramatic jump to 350. Freire was certainly known by many in thefield of education throughout the 1970s and early 1980s (286 JSTOR entries in15 years), but his work clearly had not yet made the dent that it would in the late1980s and early 1990s (582 JSTOR entries in 10 years), which, notably, was afterthe turn to critical scholarship was in full-swing.12

HER AND THE TURN TO CRITICAL MARXISM

In addition to being a central journal in the field, HER was one of the only majorjournals in the field in the 1960s (along with TCR) that regularly published politicalcommentary and research from those who were identifiably on the political left(e.g. Chomsky 1966, Cuban 1969, Hamilton 1968, Kozol 1967). Freire’s May andAugust 1970 HER articles were thus not exceptional in their radical interrogationof social injustice. Yet, although publishing radical work was not exceptional, priorto Freire’s articles, left commentary in HER, and certainly in the field more broadly,rarely noted Marxist thought or engaged the debates about Marxism within theAmerican left and internationally that raged in the late 1960s. Did Freire’s articlesmark a turning point for the publication of Marxist work in HER?

With the exception of Samuel Bowles’ 1971 analysis of schooling in Cubaand Herbert Gintis’ 1972 critique of Ivan Illich, neither of which mentions Freire,the shift to explicit conversations about Marxist thought within HER would takeseveral years. And significantly, it is Bowles and Gintis’ Schooling in CapitalistAmerica, published in 1976, and not Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970b)that instigates a sustained consideration of Marxian social and political analysiswithin both HER and the field.

At the time of publication, Schooling in Capitalist America was the mostsustained, developed, and empirically evidenced Marxian analysis of schooling inthe United States. Bowles and Gintis, Harvard-trained economists who were at the

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forefront of a move to Marxian economics within the US academy in the late 1960sand 1970s, argued that schools, as an integral part of the broader capitalist socialrelations, have historically been constructed to deliberately reproduce the socialorder, socializing students to assume their appropriate place with the capitalistwork order. “The educational system, basically, neither adds to nor subtracts fromthe degree of inequality and repression originating in the economic sphere,” arguedBowles and Gintis (1976):

Rather, it reproduces and legitimates a preexisting pattern in the process of trainingand stratifying the work force. How does this occur? The heart of the process is tobe found not in the content of the educational encounter—or the process of infor-mation transfer—but in the form: the social relations of the educational encounter.These correspond closely to the social relations of dominance, subordination, andmotivation in the economic sphere. Through the educational encounter, individualsare induced to accept the degree of powerlessness with which they will be faced asmature workers. (265)

Unlike Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b), the book received a great dealof attention in the field, including a review in the May 1976 issue of HER.

In his review, sociologist Randall Collins argued that although the correspon-dence theory proposed by Bowles and Gintis seemed correct in its conclusionthat schooling reproduces the social order—that the description of reproductionseemed true—the correspondence theory itself held little explanatory power. What,in other words, was happening inside the black box of reproduction? (Collins 1976)

Collins followed his review with a February 1977 HER article in which heelaborated his critique of Marxist approaches to causation, particularly Bowlesand Gintis’s correspondence theory and the structuralist work of French MarxistLouis Althusser, who was just beginning to be read in the United States. “Whatdetermines the structures and contents of educational systems?” asked Collins.The answer, he argued, requires a Weberian analysis of the “interaction of culturalorganization with the material economy” using the “concept of the cultural market”(Collins 1977, 27).

Bowles and Gintis never responded to Collins, and neither did Althusser. Sig-nificantly, however, Michael Apple, who by this time had developed a strongreputation within the curriculum field but had never before published in HER,wrote Collins a reply. In November 1977, HER published a letter to the editor inwhich Apple offered a critique:

While Professor Collins offers some interesting notions about cultural markets,he neglects the rather long and increasingly systematic work of the Marxists andNeo-Marxist analysts of culture who have contributed to our understanding of therelationship between cultural reproduction and economic reproduction. . . . Any the-oretically and historically complete appraisal of cultural control needs to include the

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work of Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, Lucien Goldmann, George Lukacs,and Frederic Jameson, to name but a few. In short, it must be grounded in a traditionwhich has taken as its root problem the investigation of how the form and contentof popular and elite culture are dialectically related to economic power and control.(Apple 1977, 601)

For Apple, who agreed with Collins that Bowles and Gintis’ correspondence theorywas crudely mechanistic, seeing inside the black box of schooling required thetools of critical Marxism. And notably, nowhere in the exchanges about Schoolingin Capitalist America (Bowles and Gintis 1976) is there mention of Paulo Freire,even despite the fact that Apple’s comments were the first substantive advocacyof a tradition that Freire introduced to HER readers 1970. In fact, Apple, who hadbeen publishing scholarly work in the critical Marxist tradition since the early1970s, had neither cited nor mentioned Freire in his own work up to this point(e.g. Apple 1971, 1972, 1975).

In 1979, Apple published his classic Ideology and Curriculum, which at the timeof publication was the most sophisticated critical Marxian analysis of schooling inthe United States. Nowhere in the book, which was largely framed as a responseto Bowles and Gintis’s correspondence theory, is there mention of Freire.

SITUATING FREIRE IN THE CRITICAL TURN

Although many radical educational scholars were clearly familiar with Freire andinfluenced by his writing, few of the US scholars who made the initial turn tothe Marxist tradition, and particularly the critical Marxism that underpinned theinitial wave of critical educational scholarship in the late 1970s and ‘80s, reliedupon Freire’s work for theoretical guidance.

Although there are many potential reasons for the delay of reception of Freire’swork amongst critical educational scholars, two are particularly important to note.The first is institutional and the second is distinction in project.

Institutional Constraints

In the 1970s and early ‘80s Freire did not have strong institutional support in theacademic field of education. Kozol, for instance, who was perhaps Freire’s bestknown and most outspoken champion in the United States, was a journalist and notan academic. And Continuum, a small radical press that published Pedagogy of theOppressed (Freire 1970b) and Pedagogy in Process (1978), was not equipped toforcefully push Freire’s ideas into the academic scene. Freire needed institutionalsupport in the field: a champion of his work and a publisher to consistentlydisseminate his ideas.

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Enter Henry Giroux, who was first deeply inspired by Freire when he read Ped-agogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b) as a high school teacher in the mid-1970s(Giroux 2008). After meeting in 1983, following a few years of correspondence,Freire and Giroux began to forge a strong friendship, which also led to Freire in-creasing his visits to the states and widening his networks with scholars in the field(Giroux 2008). Giroux and Freire also began coediting a series (Critical Studiesin Education) for Bergin and Garvey that became a central publisher of criticaleducational scholarship for over two decades. Significantly, the first book, StanleyAronowitz and Giroux’s Education Under Siege (1985) was dedicated to “PauloFreire who is a living embodiment of the principle that underlies this work: thatpedagogy should become more political and that the political should become morepedagogical” (unnumbered page in front of book). Freire’s critical impulse wascentral to the series.

More important, the series provided a venue for Freire’s work. In 1985, the se-ries published Freire’s The Politics of Education (with an introduction by Giroux),a collection of late 1960s and ‘70s essays, which included republication of hisHER essays from 1970. In 1986, the series published A Pedagogy of Liberation(a dialogue with Ira Shor), and in 1987 the series published Literacy: ReadingThe Word and The World (a dialogue with Donaldo Macedo). Unlike Pedagogyof the Oppressed (Freire 1970b), these books were widely reviewed, includingin HER, where Peter McLaren cemented Freire’s position as the focal point of“cultural literacy” discussions within the educational left in a 1988 article lengthessay review of Literacy that pitted Freire’s work directly against the recent workof E. D. Hirsch (McLaren 1988).

With Giroux’s help, Freire’s ideas reached new audiences. And as indicatedby the bump in JSTOR entries from 1985 to 1989, Freire was becoming anestablished figure in the field. As Rich Gibson noted in 1994, following a closeexamination of Freire’s ideas and educational projects, a new academic publishingmarket centered on Freire seemed to emerge in the late 1980s and early ‘90s(Gibson, 1994). Indeed, within a couple of years after the publication of the 20thanniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1990—which included a newforward by the publisher, a new typeset, and a “modified” translation to “reflectthe interrelationship of liberation and inclusive language” (Freire 1990, paperbackback cover)—Freire had become, where he stands today, everywhere.

Distinction in Project

Although the institutional support provided by Giroux was clearly important inpromoting Freire’s ideas, there is a second, and perhaps more salient, reason for thedelay in engagement by critical educational scholars: distinction of project. First,on a contextual level, the differences are clear: Freire’s work centered on adult

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literacy education in anti-/post-Colonial contexts, whereas scholars in the UnitedStates were focused on K–12 schooling in the United States. This contextualdifference also illuminates a second difference: a distinction in political advocacy.Unlike Freire, who advocated revolutionary struggle at least as late as his 1978book Pedagogy in Process, which reflects on his work with Marxist revolutionaryAmiral Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, the initial wave of critical scholars advocatedstructural reform. Although there were revolutionary tendencies in the UnitedStates left, by the late 1970s and ‘80s most of the left had abandoned any possibilityof sweeping radical reconstruction of the social order, which seemed increasinglyunlikely amidst the rise of neoconservatism and election of Ronald Reagan in1980 (Elbaum 2002). The initial wave of critical educational scholars sat in thesocialist camp, but they were not revolutionaries.

In addition to difference of context and political advocacy, a third, and perhapsthe most significant, distinction in project was theoretical. Freire’s work, includingPedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b), assumed the structural and ideologicalmake-up of the social order to be understood. For Freire, the question was thus:Given an unjust social order, how can and should people build movements tooverturn that order? Scholars in the United States, however, did not assume an un-derstanding of the social order. Rather, the turn to social and cultural reproductiontheory was an attempt to deepen understanding about the structure and ideologicalmake-up of the social order and the position of schooling within it. Although ques-tions of agency and resistance were certainly part of this discussion, the broaderquestion of movement building was secondary to the development of nuanceddescriptive and explanatory social theory. As Giroux noted of this distinction in a1979 Curriculum Inquiry essay review of Pedagogy in Process, which at the timewas by far the most substantive engagement of Freire’s work yet printed in aneducation journal regularly read and published in by US scholars:

For him, the fact of domination in Third World nations, as well as the substantivenature of that domination, is relatively clear. Consequently, his analysis of the so-ciopolitical conditions of domination are confined to both an acknowledgment anda strong, rhetorical indictment. While such a stance may be justifiable for ThirdWorld radicals who need spend little time documenting and exposing the objectiveconditions of domination for the oppressed, the situation is vastly different in NorthAmerica. The conditions of domination are not only different in the advanced indus-trial countries of the West, but they are also much less obvious, and in some cases,one could say more pervasive and powerful. . . . Not only the content and nature ofdomination need to be documented in this case, but the very fact of domination hasto be proven to most Americans. (Giroux 1979, 267)

Understandably, as early foundational pieces in critical educational studies demon-strate (e.g., Anyon 1979, 1980; Apple 1979, 1982; Giroux 1981, 1983), the

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primary theoretical influences on much of the initial critical work came fromMarxist thinkers such as Gramsci, Althusser, and British cultural Marxist Stu-art Hall who were concerned with the relationship between social structure andideology in modern capitalist states.

In the mid- and late 1980s, however, after the field had already begun a substan-tive conversation about the structure of the social order and had become acclimatedto the language and ideas core to the critical Marxist tradition (e.g., hegemony,ideology, dialectical thought), many critical scholars began to turn to Freire tothink about agency (e.g. Mclaren 1988). Freire, after all, argued that educationmust always be central to the theory and practice of building movements forradical social change because, regardless of context, it is through education thatconsciousness about one’s position within the social order is obtained. This is thecentral tenet of his critical educational approach and it his unique contribution toMarxist revolutionary theory. Freire’s critical work thus became helpful for many,especially those who labeled their project critical pedagogy, in thinking throughand passionately articulating how and why schooling, and education more gen-erally, should be harnessed in the push back against an unjust social order. Aseven a cursory glance at literature in the field makes clear, over the past 20 yearsPedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970b) has become the citation for signalinga scholar’s belief in education as an emancipatory process within an unjust socialorder. And, significantly, it is the word critical that tends to trigger the citation.

CONCLUSION: RENEWING A CLOSE, CONTEXTUAL READ

The practical “what can and are we going to do now?” impulse in the field is oneof its most admirable features. Undoubtedly, in addition to the turn to Freire’swork being a sign that the field was ready to more thoroughly think through thequestion of agency, the fact that such a turn occurred in the mid- and late 1980sprobably illuminates much about a general frustration among educational scholarsof the Reagan/Bush years. Freire’s call for action clearly resonated en masse at atime when progressive values, institutions, and policies were under severe attack.Although this desire among educational scholars to push back now against forcesof injustice is certainly one of the field’s strengths, it needs to be balanced with acareful examination of the ideas guiding our actions.

As Kathleen Weiler noted in an important essay review of recent books aboutFreire in 1996:

The complexities of the debate over how Freire should be read reflects one of themost striking qualities of Freire’s thought: his tendency toward inspirational butdecontextualized generalizations. His pronouncements frequently invoke universalthemes such as justice, love, and freedom—terms that can be appropriated by writersfrom a number of different traditions. When commentators want to appropriate Freire,

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they frequently “fill in” for Freire, elaborating and explaining what he “really” means,or taking his generalizations as specifics. This can lead to claims for his work thatare closer to wishes than they are supported by his actual writings. (Weiler 1996,363)

There is no question as to the power of Freire’s articulation of education as aninherently political process that must be harnessed to help people learn about socialstructure and, thus, the nature of injustice in the social order. Unfortunately, in toomuch educational scholarship mere mention of Freire substitutes for a sustainedengagement and articulation of social structure and the position of schooling withinit. “To invoke his name,” noted Rich Gibson, in a tribute and critique followingFreire’s death in 1997, “is to conjure radicalism, revolution in education—anembryonic phantom image like a Che Guevara t-shirt” (Gibson 2007, 187).

What Giroux made clear in 1979 remains true 30 years later—one cannot relyon Freire for structural understanding, which is something his work does notclearly articulate for his own context, much less for others. This was not his task.One should certainly look to Friere for guidance and inspiration in thinking abouthow society can build movements for radical social change. At the same time,however, people should also develop a nuanced understanding of their own socialconditions. As Gibson further noted in his essay:

The absence of criticism of his theoretical foundations and social practice allowshis complexity and internal contradictions to be ignored, and his own counsel, todevelop a fully critical outlook for social change rooted in the examination of socialapplications, to be denied. (Gibson 2007, 187)

In 2009, Jean Anyon, one of the initial scholars to make the critical turn,published her third book, Theory and Educational Research: Toward CriticalSocial Explanation (Anyon et al. 2009), an edited volume of essays by her graduatestudents that advocated for robust social theorizing in the field of education.Anyon’s own thinking about social theory has shifted in recent years. As she hasread Michel Foucault, for instance, she has expanded her critical Marxist lens andrethought how she conceptualizes power. She now sees how many of the newercritical positions in the academy, some of which she critiqued forcefully in earlierwork, are important in educational and social analysis (7–8).

Yet, although the social theories she engages have shifted, Anyon has not alteredher belief that one must engage social theory rigorously.

Theoretical labor is hard work. The conceptual vocabulary and grammar of ideasinvolved in a theory must be thoroughly mastered before they can be meaningfullytranslated onto data and analysis, or critiqued as a system of thought. And eachtime a different theory is encountered, or the next study undertaken, a new strugglebegins. One wants to build a theoretical edifice that is sound and of good proportion.One wants the results and explanations to be right—and useful. (6)

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How people understand the social order frames how they explain what goes oninside of it and the ways in which we can push back against injustice within it.Education scholars thus need to be armed with rich theoretical work. This meansengaging in close and contextual reads of texts, sophisticated thinking about thedescriptive, explanatory, and normative dimensions of theoretical approaches, andclose attention to the intellectual and political traditions that underpin our ideasabout the social order. The field of education requires this careful approach. If weare to develop scholars and activists who are working in solidarity toward the goalof radical social change, and perhaps even a democratic socialism underpinned bya critical Marxist, antiracist, and feminist impulse, we must do so with all of theanalytical and conceptual care that we hope a more just social order might offer.

As this historical article aims to demonstrate, renewing close, contextual read-ings of Freire’s work and revisiting the structural concerns that triggered the initialturn to the critical Marxist tradition in the field is an important step in this broadereducational and political project.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University and HarvardUniversity Archives for use of archival material.

Notes

1. The phrase “Brilliant methodology of a highly charged and politically provocative char-acter” appears at the end of the first paragraph of Kozol’s The New York Review of Booksletter to the editor as a reference to Freire’s work in Brazil. It is not a reference to Pedagogyof the Oppressed (Freire 1970b).2. There is an ocean of literature on Paulo Freire, but, strangely, there is no scholarship thatoffers more than cursory (and often historically questionable, as discussed in this article)statements about the history of the reception of his ideas in the United States. The bestdiscussion of Freire’s personal experiences in the United States remains his reflections inthe largely autobiographical Pedagogy of Hope (2006).3. For biographical information on Freire prior to his exile from Brazil in 1965, see AnaMaria Araujo Freire and Donaldo Macedo’s “Introduction” in The Paulo Freire Reader(1998). For a detailed discussion of Freire’s time in Chile, 1965–1969, see Holst (2006).4. The names listed are just some of the relevant thinkers cited in Pedagogy of the Oppressed(Freire 1970b).5. Education for the Practice of Freedom and Freire’s 1968 essay “Extension or Communi-cation” were republished together in 1973 as Education for Critical Consciousness, whichincluded an introduction by Goulet.6. For a discussion of Fox’s program, see Cole (1968). It is unclear when Freire and Illich, aCatholic priest, first met. In 1962, Illich, with the support of the Archdiocese of New York,started the Center for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC) in Cuernevaca, Mexico toprovide language and cultural training for priests and laymen doing work in Latin America.In 1967, Illich was forced out of the priesthood, at which point CIDOC took a secular turn(Fitzpatrick 1996). A result of this turn were programs in “Alternatives in Education” in

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the summers of 1969 and 1970, which attracted a host of radicals from the United Statesand provided Illich an opportunity to workshop Deschooling Society (Illich 1971, iv–vi).Kozol and Freire first met at CIDOC in the summer of 1969 (Freire 1996, 124–125).7. Notably, the book had already been in a yearlong “oral period” (Freire 2006, 43). Freirehas also explicitly indicated that, “I wrote this book on the basis of my extensive experiencewith peasants in Chile; being absolutely convinced of the process of ideological hegemonyand what that meant” (Holst 2006, 249). In December 1967, after receiving comments fromhis friend Ernani Maria Fiori, he let the manuscript sit for two months, after which herealized that he needed a fourth chapter (Freire 2006, 48–49). Presumably Freire completedthe fourth chapter in 1968, which is why the English edition has always noted “translatedfrom the original Portuguese manuscript, 1968.” However, according to Holst (2006, 249),who has seen the original manuscript, Freire’s signature at the end of the original Prefaceread “Paulo Freire, Santiage de Chile, otono de 1969,” suggesting that the Preface, andperhaps ultimately the manuscript itself, was completed in Fall of 1969. The Preface inEnglish editions simply reads “Paulo Freire.”8. This narrative is in many secondary sources but is not succinctly explained in any ofFreire’s own writings/dialogues, though in Pedagogy of Hope, Freire does note that helived in Cambridge for “nearly a year” (2006, 131). According to records available at theCSED archives, Freire’s appointment spanned from September 1, 1969 to February 28,1970 (Recommendation For A Harvard Corporation Appointment 1969).9. A note on the first page of the August 1970 article states that it is a continuation of theMay 1970 article.10. Freire’s friend Myra Ramas translated all or the majority of Pedagogy of the Oppressedwhile Freire was living in Cambridge (Freire 2006, 62). Althoug Freire has noted thatPedagogy of the Oppressed was “published in New York in September 1970” (Freire 2006,103), this is at odds with Kozol’s October comments in The New York Review of Books(Kozol 1970) that the book was to be published in November. Freire is clear that Pedagogy ofthe Oppressed (Freire 1970b) was first published in English. Thus, although some probablyread the manuscript in Portuguese prior to its translation, its mass circulation began withthe English publication, with translations into other languages, including Spanish, German,and French immediately following (Freire 2006, p. 103).11. For an annotated list of Freire’s publications in the 1960s and early ‘70s, see Grabowski(1972).12. Search last conducted on August 19, 2009. JSTOR does not include HER or TCR. Also,of the education journals currently indexed in JSTOR, several were not yet in publicationin 1970. Furthermore, about a dozen are not US journals.

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