Virtual fair on the work and thought of Paulo Freire in the 21st century: [Alejandra Valentina Soriano Soriano]

Letter to Freire.

Dear Paulo:

Even after 24 years since your passing, your works continue to have an impact, and perhaps this is something you never imagined. Considering everything you had to go through, it's impressive that your texts are still read, analyzed, and appropriated today based on the experiences you lived through. Obviously, modifications and adaptations are made to bring these reflections to a more current context.

We are two female students and one male student from the Bachelor's Degree in Educational Processes at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP). We are currently in our seventh semester, taking the subject of popular education, and since you are one of the most influential figures, we thought it appropriate to write to you to express our experience of this educational process. Below, each of us will introduce ourselves and explain how and/or through whom we met you.

My name is Alejandra Soriano, and I came to know you through your theory, so to speak, since I did a university project on it during my first semester. I'm writing to you now, almost at the end of my degree, and some time has passed. The first time I heard of you was from friends who participated in literacy campaigns at the University Center for Social Participation (CUPS), whose system is based on your ideals. The first work of yours that I read was “Letters to those who intend to teach.” Personally, I enjoyed the text. Coming from a family where everyone is a teacher, one can develop a somewhat different view of education and the world than most people. While education is often portrayed as the magic bullet for changing the world, the reality is that it's not the only factor necessary to achieve that change. After working as a primary school teacher, I adopted some of your ideas, for example, that teachers shouldn't just teach, but also learn from their students. I worked with six- and seven-year-olds, and initially, I had preconceived notions of a traditional, banking model of education, where the teacher is above the students, but the reality was different. I didn't feel I had the power or the obligation to be superior because I had once been where they were. Furthermore, when I was a student, I wished the teacher could also realize that we, as students, don't have as much knowledge as they do, but we can certainly contribute to the class. If we think about it critically, the aim of those years of formal education is to make students mere memorizers of knowledge, neglecting their ability to analyze and assimilate it. Sometimes, they are even deprived of developing their critical thinking skills, as they are only expected to repeat the ideals taught without considering the underlying reasons. That's why I tried to adapt and understand their contexts in order to achieve a less invasive approach.

My name is Ximena González, and I met you when I entered high school at 16. Some people who were dedicated to literacy, following your ideals, invited us to participate in the mountains of Puebla. At that time, I knew nothing about how to teach or stand in front of a group. I remember reading a chapter of Pedagogy of the oppressed And I was left with so many questions about what ideal education would be like, but my biggest challenge was standing in front of adults and learning to speak my mind, because in your books it's clear that we must teach people to read their reality and speak their minds, but in order for me to be able to teach others to read, I had to become literate myself, to learn that you can't liberate others without first liberating yourself. Five years have passed since that visit, and I understand more and more each time why your books have revolutionized popular education, and why, personally, they have had such a profound impact on my work as a literacy teacher. Because just as in your book Pedagogy of hope You show us that we always ignore something; I discovered that I was ignorant of everything about liberating dialogue.

I would like to thank you because from that literacy experience I formed my convictions about community work, learning about the power of dialogue with others, believing in people and, although it may sound utopian, trusting that we continue building a world where there is no longer room for oppressors, and that the oppressed take on that role and importance that has been denied them for years. 

My name is Cristian Fernández, and I met you 10 years ago through the literacy work done by the University Center for Social Participation (CUPS). This adult education project, which now belongs to the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla, began almost 40 years ago, and you probably remember this event: You were invited to the Freire Active Center, and there, at that lunch, Aurelio Fernández told you how this literacy program, which we call "by conviction," was carried out. After hearing that we went to live in the communities, that we gave classes in the summer on a voluntary basis, wherever and whenever people could, you said, "That's it! That's how it's done!"
From today onward, thousands of young people like myself have come to know you through your literacy methods, your readings, and your reflections. Based on this experience, I've sought to engage in dialogue with you through your writings, and knowing that you enjoyed the letter format, I thought that writing you a letter would be a good way to continue our conversation across time.  

The three of us, as more critical students and having read some of your texts, can propose ideas based on what is presented to us, what we know, what we have located, and what we have experienced. banking education, At certain points in our schooling, we were simply asked to memorize without any connection being made between knowledge and context, or we were prevented from developing our own ideas, and if we did have them, we couldn't express them because only one idea was considered true. However, upon entering more open environments, we were able to learn about the type of education known as “liberating education”, We were allowed an education that we understood, seeing the educator and the student as one without hierarchy, where we all learn from each other regardless of rank. 

As we write to you, it is September 17, 2021, and the political, economic, and health contexts have changed in some ways, but we will focus on the latter. 546 days have passed since the government announced the mandatory lockdown due to a virus colloquially known as COVID-19, This virus came to change all contexts, as the education we were used to was modified because it had to adapt to the circumstances; for that, all educational processes had to be adapted to be presented in a new way. on lineAt first, it was difficult because we're used to attending classes in person, and although we live in what's called the "age of technology," the truth is there are still many things we don't fully or effectively manage, even though we grew up with computers. If adapting to these new methods was difficult for us, it was much harder for some teachers, since they were so accustomed to in-person classes that this whole change was a complicated adjustment. As students within the educational field, we realized that there were many factors that were not taken into account for this adaptation, and not only by the teaching staff, but also "higher up," where it was never seen how to make all the educational processes work. An example of this was that many students did not have a device at home to take classes; the hierarchical order of banking education became more obvious. We believe that in many cases, students only memorized the topics but did not associate them with anything in their real context.

The health crisis radically changed education in a matter of days. Clearly, no one was prepared, so rethinking education as a political act in this context was entirely new. If reflecting on in-person education already led to debates and conflicting positions, this new situation of confinement showed us that there was a whole world we hadn't considered, and that we needed to think about it in order to rebuild.

And we also realized that those same situations of inequality that you reflected so much on still existed, that the oppressors would reaffirm, with this health/social/political/economic situation, their position of maintaining the world as it was, without the possibility of change, and, evidently, without the possibility of dialogue.

Despite this new and dizzying context, we think of your reflections not as a mandate that will magically provide solutions to situations of inequality and reflection, but as a possibility to look at the complexity of the situation we are living in from a different perspective. But we don't just arrive at reflection; we find ourselves thinking about the ways in which we will act to change our context, and, at the same time, change ourselves, because it is not just about rethinking things and leaving it as a thought or idea, but about applying it, depending on the circumstances in which we find ourselves. 

Finally, we want to thank you for your ideas, thoughts, and writings, which you made available to anyone who wants them. We believe it's important to learn from you and not just blindly follow what you say, but rather to develop our own ideas that we can apply in our daily lives. Ideas that will help us continue our learning process, but also our dialogue with others, in this endeavor of reading and speaking about our world. Thank you for everything.

We say goodbye to you with love,

Gonzalez Moto Ximena
Cristian Jesus Perez Fernandez
Soriano Soriano Alejandra Valentina