Freire posts

1. Illiterate people are considered to be on the “fringe of society.” We are lead to believe the only way to cure the illiterate person is to teach them to read and thus make the illiterate healthy enough to return to society (402).

2. The only way to teach the illiterate person to read and write is to engage him/her into dialogue that pertains to concrete situations. By doing so, it offers the illiterate person the “instruments with which he can teach himself to read and write.” By working from the inside out the illiterate and the educator work in collaboration on learning reading and writing. This would be considered identifying “learning content with the learning process” (404).

3. When teaching and learning vocabulary, words learned should be words the illiterate is familiar with, not words the educator chooses. By already knowing the words, the illiterate person should use cards that are broken down phonetically. The illiterate person should visualize rather than memorize the words. This leads to “the discovery of the mechanism of phonemic combinations” (408).

Question: I wonder if Freire’s “Perspectives of Literacy” is an effective way to teach illiterate people how to read. Has anyone had any experience in teaching adults how to read and write, and if so what did you find to be most effective?