Transnational routes of exchange
How did they have the opportunity to exchange and develop their visions? One opportunity was Freire’s work as an educational consultant at the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 1970 to 1980. He enjoyed the open-minded religious work there and his ideas had a lasting effect on the ecumenical conception of education (Bröking-Bortfeldt, pp. 1–3). The globalization process of the Christian Church itself allows such a world-wide organization like the WCC – founded in 1948 – with the “aim [...] to pursue the goal of the visible unity of the Church” (World Council of Churches 2016). Lange, as the director of the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva/Switzerland, invented Freire to work with him, who was famous for his book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. Paulo Freire thinks of pedagogy also as a political process, from his point of view, pedagogy cannot be neutral and has always has to be viewed in the political and cultural context. You can use Pedagogy to oppress people or to make the power structures visible and start removing them (Freire 1996). While his perspective is deeply rooted in Marxism and Christianity, Freire warned the Christians, before his work at the WCC, that he wants to help the poor of the world and chose the revolution as his way of taking action. But the liberal approach of the international ecumenical organization made it possible to ignore the negative criticism coming from conservative Christians, and stand by Lange’s decision to appoint Freire to this position (Bröking-Bortfeldt, p. 1). The liberal and non-conservative ecumenical movement made an exchange of ideas possible, even across boundaries. This can be seen as a religious route of interaction, which encouraged the perception of Freire’s perspective on education in Germany.
Freire’s reception and impact in the German context
In the following, I would like to try to reconstruct the reception of the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” in the German context and, in that matter, present Ernst Lange’s concept of ecumenical-religious learning and education. Furthermore, I want to analyze Freire’s impact on pedagogy from today’s point of view. In the early 1970s the German translation of Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” has been published, including a preface written by Ernst Lange (Freire et al. 1973, pp. 7–28). The changing politics and the student movement in the 70s provided an ideal platform for his view on education. His book became very popular and found support by the undogmatic left, due to his classic Marxist theories, but they also criticized his connection to the Christianity. Politically involved Evangelical and Catholic student communities got inspired by Freire’s view on education. The attitude of openness towards solutions of the world's problems coming from the “third world” supports this reception with its roots in the desire of transforming the society (Funke 2010, pp. 232–234). In the protestant context, Lange used the theories of Paulo Freire to develop his own educational theories. He adopted the main points of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and transferred the Latin American concept of liberation and the literacy campaigns into the European society, education, culture and religion, which provided the basis for the Paradigm of the Ecumenical learning (Bröking-Bortfeldt, p. 10). His theory has also been used for literacy campaigns and for social work, but often in a Christian context.
Even though Freire influenced the Critical Pedagogy movement and the view on education in the 70s a lot, nowadays the discussion about Paulo Freire has fallen silent in the German-speaking area (Funke 2010, p. 263). A specific Freire community like the Paulo Freire Institut (PFI) in Berlin still deals with Freire’s education theories (Internationale Akademie Berlin 2016) but it would be useful to revise and revive his great ideas to transpose them into a contemporary context.
Bibliography
Bröking-Bortfeldt, Martin: Paulo Freire. Ehrendoktor der Universität Oldenburg; Ansprachen und Vorträge zur Verleihung der Ehrendoktorwürde am 7. Juli 1997. Oldenburger Universitätsreden. Oldenburg. Available online at http://www.bis.uni-oldenburg.de/bisverlag/unireden/ur96/kap4.pdf, checked on 11/12/2015.
Freire, Paulo (1996): Pedagogy of the oppressed. New rev. ed. London: Penguin Books (Penguin education).
Freire, Paulo; Lange, Ernst; Simpfendörfer, Werner (1973): Pädagogik der Unterdrückten. 3rd edition. Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag.
Funke, Kira (2010): Paulo Freire. Werk, Wirkung und Aktualität. Univ., Diss.--Köln. Münster: Waxmann (Interaktionistischer Konstruktivismus, 9).
Internationale Akademie Berlin (2016): Paulo Freire Institut (PFI). Available online at http://www.ina-fu.org/institute/paulo-freire-institut, checked on 2/12/2015.
World Council of Churches (2016): Frequently asked questions. Available online at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/about-us/faq, updated on 2016, checked on 2/2/2016.