From his first experiences in Rio Grande do Norte, in 1963, when he taught 300

adults to read and write in 45 days, Paulo Freire developed an innovative method
of literacy, first adopted in Pernambuco. His educational project was linked to the
developmentalist nationalism of the João Goulart government. In politics, he was
a member of the Workers' Party, having been President of the 1st Executive
Board of the Wilson Pinheiro Foundation, a party support foundation established
by the PT in 1981 (predecessor of the Perseu Abramo Foundation); as well as
Secretary of Education of the Municipality of São Paulo during the PT
administration of Luiza Erundina (1989-1992).
Freire entered the then University of Recife in 1943, now UFPE, to attend the
Faculty of Law, but he also dedicated himself to the study of philosophy of
language. Despite this, he never practiced the profession and preferred to work
as a teacher in a high school teaching Portuguese. In 1944, he married his co-
worker Elza Maia Costa de Oliveira, a marriage that lasted until 1986, when his
wife died. Two years later, in 1988, the educator married Ana Maria Araújo, also
from Pernambuco, nicknamed "Nita", who in addition to being known since
childhood was his advisor in the master's program at the Pontifical Catholic
University of São Paulo, where he was a professor. Both wives were recognized
by Paulo as important in his career, including when the educator dedicated his
title of Doctor Honoris Causa at PUC in São Paulo "to the memory of one and the
life of the other." In 1946, Freire was appointed to the position of director of the
Department of Education and Culture of Social Work in the State of Pernambuco,
where he began working with poor illiterate people.
In 1961 he became director of the Department of Cultural Extensions of the
University of Recife and, in the same year, together with his team, he carried out
the first experiments in popular literacy that would lead to the constitution of the
Paulo Freire Method. His group was responsible for the literacy of 300 sugarcane
cutters in just 45 days. In response to the effective results, the Brazilian
government (which, under President João Goulart, was committed to carrying out
basic reforms) approved the multiplication of these first experiences in a National
Literacy Plan, which provided for the training of educators en masse and the rapid
implementation of 20,000 nuclei (the "culture circles") throughout the country. In
1964, months after the implementation of the Plan began, the military coup
extinguished this effort. Freire was imprisoned as a traitor for 70 days. He then
went into brief exile in Bolivia and worked in Chile for five years for the Christian
Democratic Agrarian Reform Movement and the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations. In 1967, during his Chilean exile, he
published his first book in Brazil, Education as a Practice of Freedom, based
fundamentally on the thesis Education and Brazilian Actuality, with which he had
competed, in 1959, for the chair of History and Philosophy of Education at the
School of Fine Arts of the University of Recife.
The book was well received, and Freire was invited to be a visiting professor at
Harvard University in 1969. The previous year, he had completed the writing of
his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which was published in
several languages such as Spanish, English (in 1970) and even Hebrew (in
1981).