Ricardo Baesso de Oliveira

Paulo Freire and Spiritism

To live in full the proposed ethics of Jesus, in contemporary times, is a challenge conquered by few people. Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was one of those people: a life turned to ethics and responsible for pedagogy directed to human wholeness, concerned with our intellectual and moral growth.

He was awarded the title “Patron of the Brazilian Education” due to his honest practical work and editorial. Books like Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Pedagogy of Hope, and Pedagogy of Autonomy still today have an impressive influence on Brazilian Education. As Kardec, Freire also believed that school education could not be limited to mere formal education, which is concerned only with the intelligence, but should be interested in the being in its entirety, working in changing habits.

About this matter he wrote: "the scientific preparation of the teachers must match their ethical straightness. It's a shame any gap between that and this. Scientific education, ethical correctness, respect for others, consistency, ability to live and learn with the different, not allow that our personal discomfort or our antipathy towards the other makes us accuse him of not complying with his obligations, which we must humbly and constantly also devote ourselves to”.

He also wrote: "to transform the educational experience in pure technical training is belittling what is fundamentally human in education: its forming character. If you respect the nature of the human being, the teaching of the contents cannot give up oblivious to the moral education of the student. Educating is - in substance - to form".

He believed, as we Spiritists also believe, that the spiritual progress can only occur in a life committed to ethics and social justice.

He wrote: "hence the angry tone, legitimate anger, which involves my speech when I refer to the injustices that the tattered in the world are subject to. My point of view is the one of the “wretched of the Earth”, of the excluded. I do not agree, however, on behalf of all, with the terrorist actions, since they cause the death and insecurity of innocent human beings. Terrorism denies what I have been calling universal ethics of the human being. The ethics that condemns the exploitation of the labor of human beings; that condemns hearsay, by accusing and stating that someone said A, knowing that what was said was B, distorting the truth, misleading the unwary, striking the weak and helpless, burying the dream and utopia promising knowing that the promise will not be fulfilled, testifying untruthfully, speaking bad of others just for the sake of doing it".

To overcome the crisis in which we find ourselves,
we must walk on the path of ethics 

Examining the political struggle for better days for our country, he put it this way: "if we really want to overcome the crisis in which we find ourselves, we need to be ethical. I do not believe in anything without it or out of it. One of the fatal mistakes of political activists of authoritarian messianic practice has always been to totally ignore the understanding of the world of the popular groups. Seeing themselves as carriers of the saving truth, their irrefutable task is not to propose it, but to impose it on the popular groups".

And "I also do not believe that the policy - when giving flesh to this ethical spirit - can never be dictatorial, contradictorily from the left or consistently from the right. The authoritarian path is already in itself a violation to the disturbingly inquisitive and searching nature of men and woman, who are lost when they lose their freedom”.

And also: "More than a being in the world, the human being has become a presence in the world, in the world and with others. A presence that takes part, transforms, speaks about what he does, and also about his dreams, that observes, compares, assesses, evaluates, decides, and breaks up. As a conscious presence in the world, I cannot escape the ethical responsibility of my behavior in the world. This does not mean to deny the genetic, cultural, and social conditioning to which we are subject. It means recognizing that we are being conditioned but not determined. To recognize that History is a time of possibilities and not determinism, that the future is problematic and not inexorable".

In his rich life, he maintained absolute coherence between what he said and what he practiced on issues such as autonomy, tolerance, authority, freedom and humility. Upon returning to Brazil after 15 years of exile, he was interviewed by dozens of journalists, and said: "I came to relearn Brazil, and while I am in the relearning process, of recognition of Brazil, I do not have much to say. I have more to ask".

When someone asked him, "what can we do to follow you?" Paulo, in his typical way of being, replied: "If you follow me, you destroy me. The best way to understand me is to reinvent me and not try to adapt to me". On another occasion he said: "to think right is not being too certain of our certainties. Hence it is so important to know the existing knowledge and know that we are open and able to produce the not yet existing knowledge". 

Solidarity, unlike philanthropy,
is the help that releases

Like the Spiritist Doctrine, he made the distinction between Charity considered as solidarity and Charity as philanthropy. Solidarity, he said, is the help that frees, which is provided to the one that is in need, so that he no longer will be in need. Philanthropy, in turn, has a compensatory nature, seeking to correct the consequences of social projects wrongly equated, such as the unfair distribution of wealth, but not acting to promote the correction of these injustices. Solidarity is positively built and can inspire the creation of structural mechanisms that avoid the need for subsequent compensation.

His vision on tolerance is deep to show that the virtuous tolerance should not be understood as a favor that the tolerant provides to the tolerated, because it puts him in a superior position regarding the other. Tolerance, according to Freire, is the quality of living with the different and not with the inferior.

Thinking on the necessary harmony between opposite actions, such as to do/not do, go forward/go backward, act now/wait a while, he proposes a new virtue: "patience in impatience". He wrote: "I never accept just being patient or just impatient. To work creatively in the world we have to be patiently impatient. If you are just impatient you destroy your dream before it had to be destroyed. But if you are just patient, other people will destroy your work".

Although he militated almost exclusively in the university environment, he never refused to confess his faith in God and his deep admiration for Jesus.

Once in Europe, someone asked him about the influence of the great educators, of the great philosophers, in his work. He boldly replied: - "In the first place, Jesus! I consider Jesus an educator”.

On another occasion, talking about the virtue of hope, he said: - "One of the reasons why I have hope is because I believe in God. I am convinced that I am more than my body". 

Paulo Freire's testimony about his
father, who followed Spiritism 

Freire was a Catholic. However, his father, who died when Paulo was 13, was a Spiritist and he respected him deeply for it. We found a touching testimony about the Doctrine, in a seminar that took place in an American university in 1996. The question was:

- “Sir, what kind of experiences formed you in your childhood”? 

His answer was the following:

- "My father died when he was 54 years old. This happened in 1934 and I feel his presence almost as if he were here now; such was his influence and presence in my life because he died when I was 13. In our short experience my father taught me a lot. He gave me serious testimony of his respect for others. With him I learned tolerance. For example, he was a Spiritist, a follower of Allan Kardec, the French philosopher who created, organized and systematized a Spiritist doctrine. My mother was Catholic. Of course, he was not the type that went to Church, he did not believe in the bureaucracy of the Church. He did not accept the ways of believing in God offered by the Catholic Church. That was in the first half of the twentieth century, and it was a fantastic example of his openness and courage.

I remember when I was seven years and should make my first communion. I went to see him to tell him the following Sunday I would go to Church to have my first encounter with God. And he said, “I'll go with you”. You cannot imagine how those words marked me up to this moment. This was a deep understanding of tolerance, respect for the different. Here was a father in a very particular society, very conservative. He could say, “No, all this is a lie. I will not let you accept such a lie”! Instead, he went to Church and gave me a fantastic example of the fundamental and absolute importance of solidarity, how the respect for others is absolutely essential".

References:

1 - Pedagogy of autonomy: Paulo Freire.

2 – Pedagogy of solidarity: Paulo Freire, Nita Freire and Walter de Oliveira.

3 - For a pedagogy of questioning: Paulo Freire and Antonio Faundez.

4 - Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Paulo Freire.

5 - Pedagogy of hope: Paulo Freire.