An International Conference, University of Waikato, Te Whare Wananga o Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, November 26-27, 2012.

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The University of Waikato, Te Whare Wananga o Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand is delighted to be hosting a major international conference, “Paulo Freire: The Global Legacy” as a retrospective celebration of his work and its legacy and influence across the globe.

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• “The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors.”
• “Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one.”
• “The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors.”
• “Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.”
• “Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator.”
• “Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming.”
• “To speak a true word is to transform the world.”
• “Welfare programs as instruments of manipulation ultimately serve the end of conquest. They act as an anesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solutions of these problems.
• “Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people–they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.”