JAC Volume 17 Issue 3

On a sweltering day in October of 1990, São Paulo was teeming with bustling pedestrians and noisy street traffic. The third largest city in the world, São Paulo can easily overwhelm a visitor swallowed up in the crush of its twenty-one and a half million residents; after all, this immense, modern metropolis could comfortably contain a city the size of New York and still have room for Chicago. São Paulo is a city of genuine cultural diversity: besides its Indian population, Brazil boasts a huge Asian population as well as inhabitants descended from almost every European and African nation. Peopled by men and women of every conceivable racial mix and ethnic heritage, São Paulo is a rich mosaic of humanity.

Like many of the world's great cities, São Paulo is a site of extraordinary extremes—cultural, social, and economic. Extravagant wealth resides beside wretched poverty, the products of sophisticated technology beside those of old-world handicraft. You can step out of a shop crammed full of state-of-the-art Japanese stereo components and American computer equipment to find the sidewalk neatly lined with baskets of hand-picked herbal remedies that a native Brazilian vendor is peddling to passersby. You can dine extravagantly in a fine French or Italian restaurant or snack next door in a churrascaria (a unique kind of Brazilian barbecue) or a leiteria, one of the ubiquitous shops indigenous to the area that sell thick, milk shake-like drinks made of tropical fruits.

São Paulo—this magnificent, colorful, populous megalopolis of extremes—was the context in which one of this century's greatest revolutionaries of literacy and democratic education lived and worked during the last years of his life. Undoubtedly, living in such a setting helps one develop an exquisite sense of irony. Paulo Freire fully appreciated the irony that after having been imprisoned and expelled from his native Brazil (and later from Chile), and after having spent a good part of his life in exile, he was then in 1990 serving as a high government official: Secretary of Education for the entire state (not just the city) of São Paulo. The man who had challenged the oppressive practices of his nation's (and the world's) system of education was presiding over arguably the largest school district in the world. Yet, becoming a state official did not make Paulo arrogant; he remained a humble, amiable "man of the people." In fact, Paulo Freire could serve as a role model to those of us who work as cultural laborers in the academy—a place that thrives on egoism and self-promotion, arrogance and pomposity. Despite his world-wide recognition and even adulation, Paulo exuded cordiality and heartfelt unpretentiousness. He never took himself too seriously, and even at sixty-nine years of age he seemed mildly amused by his own celebrity. That October day in São Paulo, he was to travel to another Brazilian city where a reception was being held in his honor. With a gleam in his eye and a shrug of his shoulders, he went off to his fete more with a sense of resignation than prideful triumph.

This is not to say that Paulo was not proud of his accomplishments. He was. He described the thrill he felt when during a visit to Greece a street vendor carrying a copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed approached him and asked for his autograph, declaring that Paulo's books were "very important in my country." Such scenes, occurring repeatedly over the years in practically every country he visited, made him very happy, but he never allowed the pleasure he felt in his own achievements to degenerate into pomposity, vanity, or insolence. He remained, instead, humble, warm, thankful.

Paulo was what we in the U.S. might call "a people person." He treated all people with respect, showing a genuine interest in them and their situations, regardless of their status. For example, he treated his office staff like family members. The rapport that he enjoyed with his employees was exemplary, and their love for their somewhat dishevelled, casually dressed boss was immediately apparent. He joked continually with staff even while serious business was being transacted. To increase and maintain everyday morale, he initiated a vaquinha (a kind of pool of money that everyone contributes to) in order to purchase occasional gifts for the workers—unexpected expressions of appreciation. Similarly, his office maintained a contribution pool for coffee. Like many of his compatriots, Paulo indulged liberally in countless cups of powerful Brazilian coffee throughout the day, and he was proud of the communal system his staff had adopted. With a twinkle in his eye and mock seriousness he explained, "This is not public coffee. We do not put the expense of the coffee in the budget of the Secretary. We pay. We make a collection. Of course, I pay more than the others. First of all, I drink much more than anyone else, and I receive more people, and also I'm paid more than some." When teased that with such potent caffeine coursing through his veins he must never sleep, Paulo, beaming with impishness, adopted the persona of a soap-box revolutionary and, shaking his finger menacingly in the air, exclaimed, "I am convinced that saying that coffee does harm to people is ideological! It's a plot against the interests of the state of Brazil!"

This was Paulo Freire—the playful, humorous, unassuming revolutionary who changed the world of literacy education for the better without presuming to be anyone's better. Literacy worker, Secretary of Education, coffee aficionado, Paulo did not simply pontificate in his scholarly works about "democratic practices," he practiced democratic politics in everyday life. He will be missed.