Freire began his work in the late 1950s, working with a team of anthropologists, educators, and students to develop a program of initial literacy instruction in Portuguese for rural Brazilian peasants and villagers. Members of the literacy team spent time in the communities developing lists of words and vocabulary that were key to the life there. Since then, his ideas have been adopted by government-sponsored literacy programs and by nongovernmental organizations throughout the world. The central tenet is that education and knowledge have value only insofar as they help people liberate themselves from the social conditions that oppress them. These are the basis for conversation, reading, and writing activities.
Learners begin with encoding and decoding exercises and move to more complex activities.
Collaboration and dialogue among equals. Using objects, pictures, and written texts, teachers and learners describe what they see, examine the relationships among the objects and people represented, and talk about how they feel about what they see. Ultimately, they articulate the problem illustrated and propose solutions. Among adult educators in the United States, Freire's ideas have been adapted to fit diverse learners and educational contexts. Teachers, freed from doing extensive research to identify problems for learners, become facilitators of class discussions and activities, and learn along with the class.