CRITICAL PEDAGOGY: FREIREAN HUMANIZING EDUCATION AND THE EXERCISE OF CITIZENSHIP

Abstract

This text discusses the relationship between Freirean humanizing education and citizenship through human rights on a theoretical basis. It aims to present the potential and challenges of Freirean Education as a concept of knowledge construction and a working method in the relationship between education and citizenship. It uses a methodological approach of a documentary and bibliographic nature. Human rights are the result of struggles for the recognition and guarantee of human dignity, which resulted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Children, as subjects of rights and integral parts of society, must be prepared to exercise their rights and to exercise citizenship. Education cannot be understood only as the transmission of content, but within a context of comprehensive education that must prepare future citizens, protagonists of a pluralistic society that requires respect, solidarity, and otherness, among other values. In addition to educating children and adolescents based on values, it prepares them to exercise citizenship as a right of all in social coexistence. Education is, above all, a commitment to others, individuals, and human beings, playing a fundamental role in the awareness and importance of citizenship. We conclude that, based on educational theoretical references, the limits, and possibilities of constructing knowledge that can meet the demands of individuals and overcome exclusionary and naive views present in society, a legacy of educational perspectives that have silenced other aspects of knowledge production, teaching, and learning, are evident.