By Ariel Presbitero

The Chaos of Ignorance

Pedro Alves, 60 years old

Pedro Alves, 60 years old, spent most of his life in the farm. Planting beans, rice, fruit trees and vegetables was his world. His bare hands knew exactly what his family needed by the use of a hoe. He never imagined that outside his farm is the advancement of human technology. Education, he knows, is as important as planting beans. But school is not available in a remote place like Belem de Sao Francisco, 485 km. from the capital Recife. How to survive becomes the biggest challenge in his life – land, seeds, water and human energy.

Pedro is a simple man, respectable and full of hope to learn something about the “world of letters.” I was surprised when he told me that he never touched a pencil nor a ballpen in his 60 years of existence. When he votes during elections he uses his thumb to printmark the ballot. He recognizes the colors of the plastic packs to buy a kilo of rice, a kilo of beans, sugar or coffee. When he goes on a bus and has to count his change, he speaks in a low voice with a bent head ashamed lest to reveal his ignorance.

Paolo Freire

Now there is hope in the new adult literacy programs. Adult literacy can become one of the best methods of human development. Paulo Freire, world famous Brazilian educator, started this concept of conscientization. He said, “To teach adults is not simply to reach them reading, writing, or counting but to awaken them the power to read critically the reality around them. They have their own valuable experience; they too can participate in the struggle to transform the world around them to undo the chains that bind them.”

I attended a seminar on the Freire method of Conscientization. We learned to start where the people are and use key words (generative terms) that people often use, examples are land, seed, water, house, struggle. Those words are also the clues to the oppression they sometimes suffer. The method is action-reflection-action.

School of Awareness

Pedro agreed to attend this new school of conscientization. Pedro started to learn to speak out his own name in the group. His colleagues repeated the sound of his name and familiarized themselves with it and wrote it out afterwards. He was hesitant to copy out his name because it’s easier to hold a farming hoe than a pencil. His fingers were stiff. But slowly the pencil started to move. To his amazement for the first time in his life he wrote his own name on the paper and was overjoyed. He showed me his work. He showed his wife and showed everybody the long awaited moment that now at last he, Pedro, can write.

Moment of Illumination

Children writing their names for the first time is not really exciting because it is, in a way, an obligation. It is their parents who are happy. But in the case of Pedro Alves with years of human experience behind him, learning to write is a great moment. Not an obligation but a discovery that he can do more than plant beans. Though planting beans is its own form of literacy.

Reflection leads to Action

Gradually Pedro learned to write the words beans, rice, coffee, water, land and with each word went a vital discussion on the meaning of these items in his own life and the life of the community. And from there, there is only a short step to social transformation and that’s what true education is all about.