EDUCATION THAT INTERROGATES – THE ACT OF READING AS A LIBERATING PRACTICE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE FORMATION OF THE SUBJECT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PAULO FREIRE

Abstract

This article proposes a critical reflection on the act of reading as a liberating practice, from the perspective of Paulo Freire and his defense of an education committed to the formation of critical consciousness. Because, for Freire, reading is not just decoding words, but interpreting the world in its complexity and contradictions. And it is precisely in this process of reading the world that space is opened for autonomy, listening and problematization of reality. Throughout the research, we discussed how critical reading can become a path of emancipation for historically silenced subjects. Because it is through dialogue and active listening that the word gains political and transformative meaning. That said, we ask: How can the act of reading, from Paulo Freire's perspective, be conceived as a liberating practice capable of promoting the construction of critical consciousness in the formation of the subject? For this, the theoretical centrality orbits around the works of Freire (1967; 1974; 1979; 1985; 2000; 2011), dialoguing with Piaget (1983), Faundez (1985), Vygotsky (1991; 2003; 2010), McLaren (1992; 1997; 2005), Cortella (1996; 2017), Gadotti (1996; 1998; 2018), Kohan (2005; 2020), hooks (2010; 2013), Giroux (2011; 2013; 2014; 2022), Romão (2008), Torres (2008), Gutiérrez (2008), Garcia (2008),  Gramsci (1999; 2000; 2001), Bourdieu (n.d.), among others. The research is qualitative from Minayo (2007), descriptive and bibliographic according to Gil (2008) and using the comprehensive analytical perspective of Weber (1984). The findings of the research revealed that the act of reading, from Freire's perspective, is an exercise in unveiling the world that enables the subject to recognize himself as a historical agent in contexts of oppression. Critical reading promotes displacements of consciousness, breaks with passivity and strengthens intellectual autonomy. It was found that, when mediated in a dialogical and problematizing way, reading can generate emancipatory formative processes. Thus, the text ceases to be just an object to be deciphered to become a territory of dispute and transformation. Reading, therefore, constitutes an ethical, political and pedagogical practice of liberation.