1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign: A Model to Making Public Education a Reality

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Paulo Freire, Critical Pedagogy, and Emancipation Roundtable

Abstract

This study analyzes the possibility of an alternative model for public education from the perspective of reading critically. Reading critically is defined by Freire (1994, 2005) as the conscience awakening, and the role of literacy for adults is to shift from a naïve state of merely taking in knowledge and move towards a critical state in which students perceive the relationship between the beneficiaries and strugglers as they study the Cuban issues. Through an examination of generative words and generative themes proposed by Freire, I intend to find the common threads and divergences between Freire’s concept and what was proposed at the Cuban Literacy Campaign, and define the curriculum tools of this triumphant literacy campaign so it can be replicated.

Author

• Rita Sacay, University of Illinois at Chicago