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Footnotes for Chapter 3
1. 
Sacrifice of action = verbalism
Sacrifice of reflection = activism
2. Some of these reflections emerged as a result of conversations with Professor Ernani Maria Fiori.
3. I obviously do not refer to the silence of profound meditation, in which men only apparently leave the world, withdrawing from it in order to consider it in its totality, and thus remaining with it. But this type of retreat is only authentic when the meditator is "bathed" in reality; not when the retreat signifies contempt for the world and flight from it, in a type of "historical schizophrenia."
4. I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love. For me, the revolution, which is not possible without a theory of revolution - and therefore science - is not irreconcilable with love. On the contrary: the revolution is made by people to achieve their humanization. What, indeed, is the deeper motive which moves individuals to become revolutionaries, but the dehumanization of people? The distortion imposed on the word "love" by the capitalist world cannot prevent the revolution from being essentially loving in character, nor can it prevent the revolutionaries from affirming their love of life. Guevara (while admitting the "risk
of seeming ridiculous") was not afraid to affirm it: "Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality." Venceremos - The Speeches and Writings of Che Guevara, edited by John Gerassi (New York, 1969), p. 398.
5. From the letter of a friend.
6. Pierre Furter, Educagdo e Vida (Rio, 1966), pp. 26-27.
Translation (from Portuguese): Education and Life
7. In a long conversation with Malraux, Mao-Tse-Tung declared, "You know I've proclaimed for a long time: we must teach the masses clearly what we have received from them confusedly." André Malraux, Anti-Memoirs (New York, 1968), pp. 361-362. This affirmation contains an entire dialogical theory of how to construct the program content of education, which cannot be elaborated according to what the educator thinks best for the students.
8. Furter, op. cit., p. 165.
9. The latter, usually submerged in a colonial context, are almost umbilically linked to the world of nature, in relation to which they feel themselves to be component parts rather than shapers.
10. "Our cultural workers must serve the people with great enthusiasm and devotion, and they must link themselves with the masses, not divorce themselves from the masses. In order to do so, they must act in accordance with the needs and wishes of the masses. All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently. We should not make the change until, through our work, most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out. Otherwise we shall isolate ourselves from the masses...There are two principles here: one is the actual needs of the masses rather than what we fancy they need, and the other is the wishes of the masses, who must make up their own minds instead of our making up their minds for them." From the Selected Works of Mao-Tse-Tung, Vol. III. "The United Front in Cultural Work" (October 30, 1944) (Peking, 1967), pp. 186-187.
11. This point will be analyzed in detail in chapter 4.
12. It is as self-contradictory for true humanists to use the banking method as it would be for rightists to engage in problem-posing education. (The latter are always consistent - they never use a problem-posing pedagogy.)
13. The expression "meaningful thematics" is used with the same connotation.
14. In the English language, the terms "live" and "exist" have assumed implications opposite to their etymological origins. As used here, "live" is the more basic term, implying only survival; "exist" implies a deeper involvement in the process of "becoming."
15. Professor Alvaro Vieira Pinto analyzes with clarity the problem of "limit-situations, w using the concept without the pessimistic aspect originally found in Jaspers. For Vieira Pinto, the "limit-situations" are not "the impassable boundaries where possibilities end, but the real boundaries where all possibilities begin"; they are not "the frontier which separates being from nothingness, but the frontier which separates being from nothingness but the frontier which separates being from being more." Alvaro Vieira Pinto, Consciência e Realidade Nacional (Rio de Janeiro, 1960), Vol. II, p. 284.
Translation (from Portuguese): Conscience and National Reality
16. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Dirk Struik, ed. (New York, 1964), p. 113.
17. Regarding this point, see Karel Kosik, Dialética de lo Concreto (Mexico, 1967).
Translation (from Spanish): Dialectics of the Concrete
18. On the question of historical epochs, see Hans Freyer, Teoría de la época atual (Mexico).
Translation (from Spanish): Theory of the Present Time
19. I have termed these themes "generative" because (however they are comprehended and whatever action they may evoke) they contain the possibility of unfolding into again as many themes, which in their turn call for new tasks to be fulfilled.
20. Individuals of the middle class often demonstrate this type of behavior, although in a different way from the peasant. Their fear of freedom leads them to erect defense mechanisms and rationalizations which conceal the fundamental, emphasize the fortuitous, and deny concrete reality. In the face of a problem whose analysis would lead to the uncomfortable perception of a limit-situation, their tendency is to remain on the periphery of the discussion and resist any attempt to reach the heart of the question. They are even annoyed when someone points out a fundamental proposition which explains the fortuitous or secondary matters to which they had been assigning primary importance.
21. The coding of an existential situation is the representation of that situation, showing some of its constituent elements in interaction. Decoding is the critical analysis of the coded situation.
22. Regarding the investigation and use of "generative words," see my Educação Como Prática da Liberdade.
23. According to the Brazilian sociologist Maria Edy Ferreira (in an unpublished work), thematic investigation is only justified to the extent that it returns to the people what truly belongs to them; to the extent that it represents, not an attempt to learn about the people, but to come to know with them the reality which challenges them.
24. The Brazilian novelist Guimarães Rosa is a brilliant example of how a writer can capture authentically, not the pronunciation or the grammatical corruptions of the people, but their syntax: the very structure of their thought. Indeed (and this is not to disparage his exceptional value as a writer), Guimarães Rosa was the investigator par excellence of the "meaningful thematics" of the inhabitants of the Brazilian hinterland. Professor Paulo de Tarso is currently preparing an essay which analyzes this little-considered aspect of the work of the author of Grande Sertão - Veredas [in English translation: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (New York, 1963)].
25. Lucien Goldmann, The Human Sciences and Philosophy (London, 1969), p. 118.
26. See André Nicolaï, Comportement Économique et Structures Sociales (Paris, 1960).
Translation (from French): Economic Behavior and Social Structures
27. The codifications may also be oral. In this case they consist of a few words presenting an existential problem, followed by decoding. The team of the Instituto de Desarrollo Agropecuario (Institute for Agrarian Development) in Chile has used this method successfully in thematic investigations.
28. This recommendation is made by José Luis Fiori, in an unpublished manuscript.
29. Until recently, INDAP was directed by the economist and authentic humanist Jacques Chonchol.
30. These codifications were not "inclusive," in Fiori's definition.
31. Each "investigation circle" should have a maximum of twenty persons. There should be as many circles as necessary to involve, as participants, ten percent of the area or sub-area being studied.
32. These subsequent meetings of analysis should include the volunteers from the area who assisted in the investigation, and some participants of the "thematic investigation circles." Their contribution is both a right to which they are entitled and an indispensable aid to the analysis of the specialists. As co-investigators of the specialists, they will rectify and/or ratify the interpretations the latter make of the findings. From the methodological point of view, their participation gives the investigation (which from the beginning is based on a "sympathetic" relationship) an additional safeguard: the critical presence of representatives of the people from the beginning until the final phase, that of thematic analysis, continued in the organization of the program content of educational action as liberating cultural action.
33. This particular investigation was, unfortunately, not completed.
34. The psychiatrist Patrício Lopes, whose work is described in Educação Como Prática da Liberdade.
35. See Niebuhr, op cit.
36. With regard to the importance of the anthropological analysis of culture, see Educação Como Prática da Liberdade.
37. Note that the entire program is a totality made up of interrelated units which in themselves are also totalities.
The themes are totalities in themselves but are also elements which in interaction constitute the thematic units of the entire program.
The thematic breakdown splits the total themes in search of their fundamental nuclei, which are the partial elements.
The codification process attempts to re-totalize the disjoined theme in the representation of existential situations.
In decoding, individuals split the codification to apprehend its implicit theme or themes. The dialectical decoding process does not end there, but is completed in the re-totalization of the disjoined whole which is thus more clearly understood (as are also its relations to other codified situations, all of which represent existential situations).
38. CODIFICATION
a) Simple
visual channel
+ pictoral
+ graphic
tactile channel
auditive channel
b) Compound: simultaneity of channels