Includes bibliographical references.

Chapter 1: the justification for a pedagogy of the oppressed; the contradiction between the oppressors and the oppressed, and how it is overcome; oppression and the oppressors; oppression and the oppressed; liberation -- not a gift, not a self-achievement, but a mutual process. -- Chapter 2: the "banking concept" of education as an instrument of oppression -- its presuppositions -- a critique; the problem-posing concept of education as an instrument for liberation -- its presuppositions; the "banking" concept and the teacher-student contradiction; the problem- posing concept and the supersedence of the teacher-student contradiction; education -- a mutual process, world-mediated; people as uncompleted beings, conscious of their incompletion, and their attempt to be more fully human. -- Chapter 3: dialogics -- the essence of education as the practice of freedom; dialogics and dialogue; dialogue and the search for programme content; the human-world relationship, "generative themes", and the programme content of education as the practice of freedom; the investigation of "generative themes"; the various stages of the investigation. -- Chapter 4: antidialogics and dialogics as matrices of opposing theories of cultural action -- the former as an instrument of oppression and the latter as an instrument of liberation; the theory of anti-dialogical action and its characteristics; conquest, divide and rule, manipulation, and cultural invasion; the theory of dialogical action and its characteristics -- cooperation, unity, organization and cultural synthesis.

20 years on, this revolutionary work has been revised and updated, and Paulo Freire outlines a blueprint for revolution. This is a fascinating account which continues to influence educationalists across the world.

Translated from Portuguese.