Text: Paulo Freire and Communication Studies

(Adapted from Tania Ramalho article in Communication

- Oxford University Press. 

       Paulo Freire, the Brazilian activist educator and philosopher of education, affirmed that communication is at the heart of pedagogy, as teaching, and learning through praxis that involves reflection and action ultimately to address social injustice and dehumanization. Dialogue is at the center of his pedagogical approach, as means to individualization and humanization. Dialogue assumes participants from EJA - young and adult education- to be on an equal level even in the presence of difference. In his literacy work, Freire required teacher-facilitators to co-investigate the most important themes in the lives of students. These themes were codified into pictures and brought to dialogue that animated the re-creation of knowledge of participants’ world in the process of learning how to read, achieving the meaning of the word. The objective of this approach was not to reproduce “banking” education but to promote revolutionary emancipation of individual and society. Freire developed his work in life context at the state of Pernambuco, in the challenging circumstances – socially, historically, and geographically – of the Brazilian Northeast Region. He experienced poverty and hunger and was lucky in his access to education thanks to the efforts of his mother. He rose through the ranks of civil service, serving at state and national levels, addressing the literacy and emancipatory needs of the population, particularly adults in rural areas. Exiled during the military dictatorship in Brazil, Freire lived in Chile, the United States, and Switzerland, where he worked on education projects worldwide. 

A questão foi desenvolvida em língua portuguesa oficial do Brasil.

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    There’s one fact that seems to stand out for anyone who has read Rama Gheerawo’s 2022 book, Creative leadership: born from design. It likely sticks with people because it seems so absurd as to border on very bleak comedy, but also because it reveals a fundamental truth about how unnervingly simple us humans can be. 

    In the very first chapter of the book, we learn that a study of Fortune 500 companies showed that (in America), something as arbitrary as height can be the key to the C-suite: 4% of adult men in the general US population are 6’2” or taller, but 30% in the CEO sample reached those heights. It feels pathetically caveman-like that even now, in the 21st century, we implicitly place power in the hands of those who are taller than us — or that those taller than us have a natural propensity to get that power for themselves. 

    For Gheerawo, issues around leadership really came to a head around 15 years ago, he says, when he found himself “really disillusioned” with the constant and innumerable ways the world excluded certain groups of people, and how much of that could be solved if there was far more willingness from decision-makers to involve design early on as a key tool for problem-solving.

<R>Emily Gosling. Why the world needs a new type of leader. Internet: (adapted).  

The 1920s: 'Young women took the struggle for freedom into their personal lives

(1º§) Two years after the Representation of the People Act 1918, the Times published grave warnings against moves to extend voting rights to women under 30. Mature females might now engage with politics, but the "scantily clad, jazzing flapper to whom a dance, a new hat or a man with a car is of more importance than the fate of nations" must never be entrusted with a vote.

(2º§) The fast, frivolous flapper of the 20s was partially a cultural stereotype, but she was also a focus of serious debate. With her short skirts and cigarettes, her cocktails, sexiness and sass, she was not only offensive to the men at the Times, but also a concern to older feminists, who saw in her pleasure-seeking, taboo-breaking ways a younger generation's disregard of all for which the suffragettes had fought.

(3º§) But if the politics of feminism seemed less important to the "flapper generation", this was partly because young women were taking the struggle for freedom into their personal lives. Ideas of duty, sacrifice and the greater good had been debunked by the recent war; for this generation, morality resided in being true to one's self, not to a cause. Towards the end of the decade, some feminists would argue that women's great achievement in the 20s was learning to value their individuality.

(4º§) Personal freedoms remained dependent on public reform and active UK feminists such as the Six Point Group continued to campaign. Women were given electoral equality with men in 1928; legislation brought equality in inheritance rights and unemployment benefits; and women profited from the Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act, which, in 1919, had given them access to professions such as law.

(5º§) Changes in work patterns were dramatic, with a third of unmarried women moving into paid employment across an expanding range of jobs in medicine, education and industry. Mass employment also made women a consumer power. Fashion was one of several industries that expanded rapidly to meet their demands. While the Times considered clothes a frivolity, for women they were a daily marker of liberation: rising hemlines, sportswear and even trousers made their generation physically freer than any in modern history.

(6º§) Sexual mores were also changing. While double standards persisted, a significant number of women were beginning to claim the same licence as men. There were small steps of encouragement, too, with divorce made easier by the Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 and contraception made more readily available by the Marie Stopes mail-order service. The flapper generation may have been comparatively apolitical and self-absorbed, but, as they puzzled out what freedom meant and tested their personal limits, they were broaching issues that would be hotly debated during the 60s and 70s.

Judith Mackrell is the Guardian's dance critic and the author of books including Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation

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English as a Lingua Franca

        A number of researchers have studied conversations in English as a Lingua Franca and have noted a number of somewhat surprising characteristics, including:

•  Non-use of third person present simple tense -s (She look very sad).

•  Interchangeable use of the relative pronouns who and which (a book who, a boy which).

•  Omission of articles where they are mandatory in native-speaker English.

•  Increasing of redundancy by adding “inexistent” prepositions (We have to study about…, The article treats of…).

•  Pluralisation of nouns which are considered uncountable in native-speaker English (informations, staffs).

        The evidence suggests that non-native speakers are not conforming to a native English standard. Indeed they seem to get along perfectly well despite the fact that they miss things out and put things in which they ‘should not do’. Not only this, but they are actually better at ‘accommodating’ - that is, negotiating shared meaning through helping each other in a more cooperative way - than, it is suggested, native speakers are when talking to second language speakers (Jenkins 2004). In other words, non-native speakers seem to be better at ELF communication than native speakers are.

(Jeremy Harmer, The practice of English language teaching. Adaptado)