Um legado global da obra freireana: um diálogo com Peter Roberts

Em fase das discussões propostas e esperadas para o debate do pensamento freireano em ocasião do centenário de seu nascimento, buscou-se neste texto estabelecer um diálogo com um dos pesquisadores que têm, ao longo de décadas, estabelecido toda uma caminhada científica, acadêmica e social, tendo como um dos aportes de reflexão a obra do professor brasileiro Paulo Freire. Assim, foi realizada entrevista com o professor Peter Roberts, cuja produção tem atravessado fronteiras e alargado a discussão com e do pensamento freireano. Peter Roberts é professor na University of Canterbury, em Christchurch, na Nova Zelândia, na área de Educação. O objetivo da entrevista, portanto, foi realçar a obra de Paulo Freire no enfoque dos trabalhos acadêmicos realizados pelo professor Peter Roberts, quer estabelecendo pontes dialógicas de Freire com outros autores, quer perspectivando novos caminhos que atualizam o pensamento freireano.

, already made a major contribution to educational studies, but he had much more to say. The release of his co-authored volume with Ira Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation (Freire & Shor, 1987), marked the beginning of an intense period of intellectual activity over the last ten years of his life. Several other books with a dialogical format appeared (Escobar et al., 1994;Freire & Faundez, 1989;Freire & Macedo, 1987;Horton & Freire, 1990), along with multiple sole-authored works addressing a rich range of philosophical, political and educational themes (Freire, 1993(Freire, , 1994(Freire, , 1996(Freire, , 1998a(Freire, , 1998b(Freire, , 1998c Darder, 2015;Kirylo, 2011;Mayo, 1999;Morrow & Torres, 2002;Roberts, 2000Roberts, , 2010Schugurensky, 2011.) 3. He encourages us to reflect on the ideals to which we are committed, whatever our domain of study or activity. He offers hope, while also acknowledging the existence of despair and providing a sobering assessment of political realities (Roberts, 2016). He rubs against the prevailing cultures of performativity, instrumentalism, superficiality, and selfishness, offering a utopian view of education that is anchored in the idea of building a better, but never perfect, world (Roberts & Freeman-Moir, 2013). This is a world, he would say, that is always in the making, always incomplete.

Ester Maria de Figueiredo Souza: What impact has Freire had in New Zealand?
Peter Roberts: Freire has certainly left his mark in New Zealand (see Roberts, 1999). In the educational community, he is perhaps best known among philosophers of education, but most sociologists of education and educational historians will also have some knowledge of his work.
Those who have taught courses in curriculum studies, the politics of education, adult education, and comparative education have also frequently incorporated his ideas in their lectures.
Freirean themes will often be addressed via supervisor/student relationships, in the completion of Masters and Doctoral theses (cf. Roberts, 2019). There has been little space for educational theory in many teacher education programmes over recent years, but again, most who have had a long-term professional commitment in this area will have some familiarity with key texts such as Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire's work has been important for many Māori scholars in education (see Smith, 1999), who have adapted his ideas in distinctive ways to advance our understanding of indigenous knowledge and experience. And, as has been the case elsewhere in the world, Freire's influence has extended well beyond the realm of education. Freire's educational philosophy appears to have had little direct bearing on policy thinking, but that is hardly surprising; policy documents in New Zealand seldom demonstrate an in-depth engagement with theory.  (Roberts, 2008(Roberts, , 2012Roberts & Freeman-Moir, 2013;Roberts, Gibbons & Heraud, 2015;Roberts & Saeverot, 2018). Freire's ideas lend themselves well to this kind of scholarship, providing both a robust foundation for asking educational questions of a literary text and the opportunity for a work of fiction to 'speak back' to Freirean theory. This has been evident to me in previous Freirean readings of Hesse (see Roberts, 2010Roberts, , 2012  Freire was consistent on this point throughout his writing career. When he spoke about humanization in his early books, he stressed that this was a matter of becoming more fully human, more completely what we are meant to be. We become more fully human, his work suggests, through engaging in critical, dialogical praxis, but we do so in an imperfect world.

Ester Maria de Figueiredo
Struggling against dehumanizing structures, policies, attitudes, and practices is part of the process of humanizing ourselves. We never engage in this process alone; thus my incompleteness is also your incompleteness. Your use of the word 'formation' is interesting, particularly in the light of current trends in education. The emphasis on performance, on measurement, on relentless assessment, within a crammed curriculum, with teachers and students always up against the clock, runs counter to the less precise but arguably immeasurably more important process of formation. The idea of formation is central to the European notion of bildung, and Freire's work complements this, in a healthy way. In particular, I would say that Freire sharpens our awareness of educational formation as a necessarily political process.
Schooling is a relatively short-term affair; formation is a lifelong process. We are, Freire shows, formed through the relationships we build, the books we read, the jobs we undertake, the