Paulo Freire and ‘the need for a kind of education in hope’

Abstract

This paper explores Paulo Freire’s philosophy of hope. This is significant because, for Freire, it was human hope that rendered education possible, necessary and necessarily political. Like other areas of his thought, however, his reading of hope contained ambiguities and contradictions, and the paper explores these by locating Freire’s thought in the wider context of the philosophy of hope. It focuses in particular on the divergent interpretations Freire provides regarding the objective and the experience of hope. It argues that many of the conflicting demands placed on the radical educator stem from the tensions and vagaries one finds within his philosophy. The paper concludes by discussing the wider significance of Freire in light of the discourse of ‘complex hope’ that is developing within educational studies.

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