University of Illinois at Chicago

CI 550 Conflicts in Curriculum Development

Dr. Marvin Lynn
Edgar Matallana

Daring to Dream

Chapter 3 : History as Possibility

Notes written by Paulo Freire at the request of Radiotelevisao Portuguesa, on August 16, 1993.

Challenges politics to epistemology in the end of century :

 North-South relations. Unbalance between them ends up affecting the North's own interests and
hurting the advance of democracy.
 Hunger a horrid reality and resounding obscenity.
 Violence and hunger
 Violence and economic interests
 Violence and racism
 Violence and sexism
 The rebirth, not only in Europe of the fascist threat.
 The astonishment of the Lefts before the fall of the so-called realist socialism. According to
Freire because an act of rebellion than the death of socialism.
 Neoliberal discourse that speaks death of : Ideologies, history, social classes that speaks about
the death of utopias, of dreams, and of socialism as being unviable.
 Not recognize that the authoritarian, Stalinist framework with which it was imposed.
 The positives of capitalism lies in the democratic framework in which it moves, thus
reactivating Stalin-ism, unbearable negativity.”In reality, the role of the Lefts today is not to
believe that they already exist or must remain authoritarian, “religions,” but rather to overcome
their historical, philosophical, political, epistemological errors, such as, for example, that of
antagonizing socialism and democracy.
 The end of century brings back the importance of the role of subjectivity.”One of the ghastly
consequences of that mechanisms understanding of subjectivity was an equally mechanisms
intelligence of history, one deterministic in nature, where the future was viewed as inexorable,
virgin, therefore, stripped of any problematics. It is in history as possibility that subjectivity, in
a dialectic-contradictory relationship . Takes on the role of subject rather than simply object of
world transformations. The future, then, stops being inexorable and becomes what it is
historically: problematic.”

Chapter 7 : Changing is Difficult, but Possible

Conference held in February 1997, in Recife (PE), an event organized by Servico Nacional da
Industria (Sesi).

What is Sesi? It Promote the quality of life of the employee and their dependents, with focus on
education, health and leisure, and encourage socially responsible management of industrial enterprise.
It is the national leader in promoting the improvement of the quality of life of the employee and their
dependents and socially responsible management of industrial enterprise.
Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed during his stay as a teacher in Sesi. “...I mean to say that my
reflections on the oppressed, and the dominant depth of the dominator, about the possibility, for the
oppressed, of adapting so as to survive, all that I learned here, and I confirmed it later in my
experiences in Africa and Latin America.”

“..In reality it is some bad postmodernity, as it about transforming the organism and the affective
relations that take place within it into businesses-bureaucratic hardness, that is, a search for company-
like efficacy. I believe that we can be efficacious without becoming a drag, without hurting others...Sesi
made a number of things viable that were absolutely necessary to my education as an educator.”

“..Maybe one of the best ways for conceiving of education is to say that it can not accomplish it all, but
it can accomplish something. That is, our problem, of educators, is to ask ourselves if it possible to
make viable what sometimes does not seem possible.”

“Changing is difficult, but it is possible : Only the beings that have becomes, through their long
experience in the world, able to signify the world are capable of changing the world and are incapable
of not changing. And those beings are precisely men and women.”

“In order to confront the ideological discourse of impossibility of change, it is necessary to create an
equally ideological discourse for the possibility of change, but one also founded in the scientific truth
that it is possible to change. I do not accept; I refuse completely this profoundly pessimistic statement
that it is not possible to change.”

“..if being a man or a woman were to put me as something obvious, impossible to change, I would
prefer not to be a man or a woman; I would sooner not continue in the world. I like being human
because I live between the possibility of changing and the difficulty of changing. It is living the
dialectic of being able to that satisfies my presence in the world, of a being able, at the same time-and
for that reason- is the object of history, and once self-recognized as such, can come to be the subject of
history. “

“To me, without hope there is no way we can even star thinking about education. In fact, the matrixes
of hope are matrixes of very educability of beings, of human beings. It is not possible to be unfinished,
and not seek. Education is precisely that seeking movement, that permanent search.”

“The moment we invent a language, changing is possible. Evidently, change is subjected to difficulties.
There is no doubt that. That is, change is not arbitrary, you do not change because you want to, nor do
you always change in the direction you dream of. What is necessary to know is that change is not
individual; it is social, with an individual dimension. But change is possible!”