Convergences of Paulo Freire and Theodor Adorno around emancipatory education

Abstract

This study was an attempt to bring together Freire and Adorno in order to understand how one can perform an educational action capable of fostering emancipation, liberation, and autonomy. The following enquiry guided this study: what are the confluences between Freire and Adorno insofar as emancipatory education is concerned? This study is a theoretical-reflexive approach to a bibliographical and its main sources are the works of Freire and Adorno as well as the works of other authors relevant to the discussion of the theme. Freire and Adorno contrast their critical perspectives with the traditional thought that permeates current education thinking and practice, problematize traditional educational theories, and try to go beyond them in order to promote emancipation, liberation and autonomy, thought of as fundamental formative objectives. Both thinkers are watchful on the regressive possibilities of an education that shapes and fits a learner into the world as it is established, oppresses and makes of the learner but a repeater and consumer of didactic contents. Emancipatory education rebels against the upbringing of a “lesser being”, whose subjectivity was objectified, and who is incapable of being the protagonist, or of fighting to become a protagonist and maker of its own existence. Thus, emancipatory education aims at bringing forth a common life form that recognizes the plurality of ways of being; as is required by the contemporary democratic citizenship process.