Paulo Freire in Times of Liquid Integration

The article argues for the transformative power of education in the sense of Freire’s ‘practice of freedom’. To this end, we link Freire’s pedagogy with contemporary social developments in the light of liquid integration. Liquid integration perspective makes clear that peoples’ doing, and structure are relational, temporal, contingent and open – likewise Freire always argued and practiced with his educational approach. With Freire we underline that neoliberal educational policy is based on a dualistic, sectarian worldview that cements the past to shape the future – a future that is constructed as predetermined and inevitable. By this education policy ignores not only the reproduction of inequalities and hierarchies in education and society and by this cements suppression, it also ignores the dynamics of liquid integration processes. We assume that only a processual understanding of education, an “anti-sectarian educational practice of freedom” seems to be the only practice that recognizes and addresses the challenges of liquid integration. We argue further that a “liquid transformative practice” may become a new professional mandate of the teacher involving both a critical consciousness and a critical solidarity intervention leading to the deconstruction of hegemonic perspectives and creating a ground for communicative transformative action.