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Educators are responsible for social transformation.
In "Teacher, yes; aunt, no ," Brazil's greatest educator denounces the ideological trap of replacing the word "teacher" with "aunt" to designate "a person who teaches." In the ten letters that comprise the book, the author analyzes the true and authentic qualities of the ethical virtues that progressive educators must possess and practice if they want to be agents of social transformation. "Teacher, yes; aunt, no" also includes an introduction by Ana Maria Araújo Freire and a foreword by Jefferson Idelfonso da Silva.
In 1963, in Angicos, in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte, 300 rural workers were taught to read and write in just 40 hours using the method proposed by Paulo Freire. This was the result of the pilot project of what would become the National Literacy Program under the government of João Goulart, the president who would later be deposed in March 1964. In October of that same year, Freire left Brazil to protect his own life. He only returned to the country in 1979, with the democratic opening.
Throughout his career, Paulo Freire has received more than one hundred honorary doctorates from various national and international universities, as well as numerous awards, including the UNESCO Education for Peace Award and the Brazilian government's Order of Cultural Merit. He is a member of the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame and the Reading Hall of Fame.
"It is unacceptable that we continue, on the eve of the new millennium, with such alarming deficits in our education—both quantitative and qualitative. With thousands of so-called lay teachers, even in areas of the South of the country, sometimes earning less than half the minimum wage. Heroic, generous, loving, intelligent people, yet despised by the national oligarchies."
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