Paulo Freire died on the 2nd of May, 1997. The First international Meeting of the Paulo Freire Forum took place less than a year later in São Paulo, from April 28th - April 30th, 1998, with the presence of a significant number of international Freirians. Due to the quality of the Forum, its international acceptance and the growth of the Freirian movement in Brazil and the world at large, the Paulo Freire Institute, in partnership with other institutions, decided to hold similar events, biannually, in other countries.

On subsequent even numbered years, four more international meetings have taken place and reflections were developed in each around a thematic axis, what Paulo Freire called an ‘epochal unit.’ In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he defined these as “a group of ideas, concepts, hopes, doubts, values and challenges seeking plenitude, in dialectic interaction with their opposites.”

While the theme of the First International Paulo Freire Forum was ‘Paulo Freire’s Legacy’, the subsequent Forum in Bologna, Italy (March 29-April 1, 2000) focused on the University, establishing a ‘Bologna Charter’ which was also the birth certificate of the Paulo Freire Universitas (Unifreire). In the Los Angeles meeting (September 19-21, 2002) the axis of the discussion concerned Peace and Justice. The September 19-22, 2004 Fourth International Forum in the historic Portuguese city of Porto resulted in a ‘Porto Charter’ that highlighted the ‘Multiculturalism of Planetary Citizenship.’ Valencia, Spain was the site of the Fifth Meeting (September 12-15, 2006) and the dialogue culminating in the ‘Valencia Charter’ advanced the institutional organization of the Freirian community by creating a World Council of Paulo Freire Institutes.

Aside from these specific themes, the five Forums held until now symbolize the step-by-step construction of a Freirian community.

The year 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire’s masterpiece, which has been translated into more than forty languages. It is certainly the most popular book of educational thinking in the world today for those who believe in and practice education for liberation. Pedagogy of the Oppressed has become an epistemological paradigm and ethical guidebook for struggles that have overflowed the boundaries of formal education and swollen innumerable rivers of militancy and transformation in various cultural contexts throughout the planet.

Recuperating and evaluating the four decades of this revolutionary educational philosophy is essential not only in terms of historical memory but, above all, because there is a pedagogical need to retrace its roots, bringing them up to date in the light of new challenges. It is once again time to think critically about one of the important lessons master Paulo Freire left us; one coherent with his purpose to alert those who identify with his praxis about the danger of mystifying and the need to update and reinvent his legacy.

The Sixth Meeting of the Paulo Freire Forum proposes to reengage with and reconsider Pedagogy of the Oppressed in a critical reading of the world then and now and to promote the Pedagogy of Hope without which the transformation and construction of historical paths is impossible.

The 2008 commemoration of the first decade of the Paulo Freire Forum has another purpose as well: to reaffirm the elements that characterize its genesis and its history: its critical nature (it mystifies neither personalities nor theories), its organic nature (both the preparation and realization of the Forum are not restricted to the event itself, they are extended by connective networks of people, actions and projects), its scientific nature (the blending of substantive nuclei of experiential wisdom in dialogue with the paradigms of science), its political nature (believing in the pedagogy of the oppressed requires the denial of neutrality and the assumption of positions of social intervention) and its formational nature (the Forum is set up as a space for dialoguing about and producing knowledge).

PFI/PUC Partnership

There is something symbolic about the partnership between the Paulo Freire Institute (PFI) and the Faculty of Education of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), co-hosts of the sixth international meeting of the Forum: their spaces became two of Paulo Freire’s great workplaces during his final years. When he wasn’t on the road teaching throughout Brazil or abroad, Freire was a professor at PUC-SP from 1981 until 1997. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the inspirational founder of the PFI continued to be an active presence at PUC until his death. In both spaces, the Freirian legacy is alive and in a constant process of reinvention. This is due not only to the fact that there are many colleagues in both places who worked with and learned from Paulo Freire, but, above all, because his projects incorporated the most substantial principles of Freirian praxis and were based on “education as the practice of freedom.”

A brief history of the freirian movement

From the summary history we are about to outline two necessary reflections emerge: 1)The Paulo Freire Forum is a space for interaction and reflection of all the people who constitute the network of those who fight alongside the oppressed, a network that Paulo Freire and the founders, directors and other members of the Institute as well as many other Freirian adherents and institutions have dreamt about and attempted to concretize. Therefore it has a permanent character.

The biannual international meetings represent periodic moments of systematic reflection and bring Freirians together through their interventions and research in various parts of the world where they live and work. They are episodic and communal, producing learning and fraternization. As Paulo Freire wrote in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “Really, nobody educates anybody, just as nobody is educated by him or herself; people are educated in communion, mediated by the world…” International meetings are opportunities for true world culture circles in which experiences are shared by Freirians, men and women both, mediated by their world of immediate realities and by the mediated reality of these “epochal units.”

Unifreire, created in Bologna in 2000, materializes through the movement of the Freirian network and the world Freirian community and represents a knot of articulation and connection among other knots spread throughout the world. Thus it has the position of secretary in the Forum movement, operating from PFI headquarters, the Paulo Freire Institute of Brazil.

2) In the history of the Frieirian movement, there have been some outstanding moments:

I – Birth (1991-1997) The Paulo Freire Institute was born of long discussions between its founders and Paulo Freire himself, who only agreed on its creation because the institution proposed was neither a sect nor a ‘church’ with ministers and disciples, but was organized around a movement composed of people and institutions committed to the causes of oppressed men and women.

Created in Brazil, with its headquarters in São Paulo, the young PFI benefited from the active presence of Paulo Freire, who desired a permanent reinvention of his ideas and concepts, rather than that his work and thinking be institutionalized.

II – Structuring and Expansion (1998-2003)

As the network idea acquired substance, several other “knots” were created: PFIs, nuclei, academic chairs, study and intervention groups, and culture centers around the planet. Moreover, while that ‘old Occidental Lady,’ the University, seems increasingly disconnected from its universal goals, what is most apparent now are the flaws in its corporate character and the weakening of its social commitments both of which raise questions about its legitimacy.

The choice of Bologna, Italy as the site of the Second International Paulo Freire Forum was, thus, both metaphorical and intentional. The University of Bologna was the first Western Universitas to arise from student initiative, expressing a sense of social commitment, contrary to others of its kind which were born as corporations of intellectuals. Bologna was the birthplace of the Unifreire, structured by and for the growing network of Freirians and immediately put into use as the Permanent PFF Secretariat, which now represents a large part of the international Freirian community.

This was a period in which various PFIs were created on different continents. This growth, at the same time that it advanced the movement also brought new challenges, such as the need to preserve the Freirian identity without impeding the autonomy of local and national initiatives.

This period also coincided with an explosion of fundamentalist violence. On one hand, September 11th, coming from the resistance to “Pax Americana” imperialism. On the other, the self-proclaimed “lords of the world” launching merciless war against oppressed populations in vast areas of the planet, threatening world peace and placing the world on the brink of a precipice into which humanity seemed about to slide and roll, once again, in the chasm of barbarity.

It was in this context that a discussion of peace and justice was undertaken by the Third International Paulo Freire Forum in the very heart of the Empire and one of the richest cities in the world: Los Angeles, California.

III – Consolidation (2004-2008)

Up to this point, the PFIs had not produced any permanent collaborative work. That is when the idea for the development of a Research Project on Globalization and Education arose, providing the kickoff for the first focused experiment in epochal unity of a scientific nature imbued with the rigor and empathy which a collective subject of cultural creation must contain and that always characterized Paulo Freire’s initiatives. The project is being successfully developed by a dozen and a half national Freirian teams from different countries and is due to conclude in 2008.

Increasingly mired in the complex processes of the globalization of capitalist accumulation, the world heard, for the first time, the clamor of the poor for alternatives during this period. Such solutions were of little concern to the global hegemony. But they inspired Freirians to defend the idea of “planetarization” for a planetary and multicultural citizenry. This was a launching pad for the PFIs, especially the Brazilian one, to play an important role in the World Social Forum and the World Education Forum.

At the same time that the globalized neoliberal tumult continues to demonstrate its fragilities and contradictions for contemporaneous capitalist accumulators, the social movements are gaining strength and transforming themselves into new actors on the stage of political struggle. The Freirian movement has allied itself to this cause and continues to expand in more solid and more organized ways.

Both the Brazilian PFI and those of other countries have consolidated their research, publication and assessment programs with public organs and private institutions, giving the Freirian legacy wide and well-founded visibility until it has become a standard reference in various places in the world, whether in the elaboration and execution of public policy, plans, programs and projects or in the critical thinking they inspire.

The World Council of PFIs

With the growing number of Freirian units spread around the world and faced with numerous requests for founding institutes, academic chairs and groups for intervention and reflection, the need has arisen for a kind of relative institutionalization, without damaging the autonomy that has characterized the initiatives of the national PFIs.

That led to the idea of creating a World Council of PFIs, which was the fruit of the Fifth Paulo Freire International Meeting in Valencia, Spain and which has its concrete existence in each of the biannual encounters.

Its composition is well-defined in the ‘Valencia Charter’ and its prerogatives deal with the consolidation of the structure of the PFIs, with guaranteeing a Freirian identity to units that have applied for inclusion in the network, and with the formulation of the leaderships of the world movement. It has no executive function.

The secretariat of the CMIPF is itinerant since it is located, during the first half of the interstices between two international meetings, in the PFI that organized the last encounter and then passes to the site of the subsequent meeting after the first year elapses. This Secretariat should not be confused with the Permanent Secretariat of the Forum which is the Unifreire.

The Sixth International Paulo Freire Forum

As is customary, the locale and the theme of the next international encounter is decided by a plenary of PFIs in the previous meeting. In Valencia, it was decided that the Sixth IPFF would take place in Brazil, returning to its country of origin in 2008, exactly ten years after the first meeting. This decision was based on various motives:

a.2008 is the conclusive year for the Globalization and Education Project, whose final theme is Adult Education, a sector in which Paulo Freire was a defining force. b.It coincides with the celebration of the seventeenth anniversary of the creation of the PFI. c.It is the moment to evaluate the 10 years of the PFF’s existence and the five first International Meetings so as to initiate a new meeting cycle. d.It celebrates 40 years of Freire’s masterpiece, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

As the ‘epochal unit’ or central theme of the Sixth International Paulo Freire Forum the chosen theme is Globalization, Education and Social Movements: 40 years of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

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