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The Luiz Freire Cultural Center: Tropical Hothouse of Literacy
By Shannon Walbran
High above the coastal town of Olinda in northeastern Brazil, a small
turn-of-the-century mansion sits in a grove of mango, banana, cashew, and
coconut trees. Today, this tropical villa houses the Luiz Freire Cultural
Center, named after Brazil's first physicist and mathematician. Luiz Freire
spent his life calculating and inventing, advancing academia in his home
state of Pernambuco and throughout the country. His son, Marcus Freire,
became an activist and struggled against the military dictatorship of the
70's and the political oppression that blighted Brazil's most precious
fruits, its citizens. Continuing his family's tradition of scholarship and
citizenship, Marcus purchased this tiny Eden in 1977 and donated it, in his
father's name, to an organization that would cultivate democracy in
society's gardeners and saplings: teachers and students.
"The initial idea," says director Eduardo Homen, "was to make the Luiz
Freire Cultural Center into a support site for artistic and cultural
protests in opposition to the military dictatorship. We started in 1972,
but moving into this house in 1977 gave us a stable base for our work." In
1979, a group of lawyers met to initiate work in defense of the poor in the
region, who at that time were battling to own the land on which they lived.
This was the first big project for the center, permitting the creation of
its financial and administrative infrastructure. From that point on, the
center began to fight in diverse arenas, and thanks to the Freire
benefactors, had total political and financial autonomy. By 1987, the center
began
to discuss the strategy that today has made it into one of northeastern
Brazil's star non-governmental organizations.
"Today, we are concentrating on citizenship, education, information
technology, and communication," says Homen. The center's work affirms a
policy of literacy for all, he continues, and to that end, it is reaching
out to both teachers and students. He names other initiatives: community
TV and radio form a part of the plan. Indigenous peoples have a right to an
appropriate education with respect to their culture – this has been
transformed into law. Politicians now take into account the rights of
children and adolescents to decent schooling. The center's policies are
discussed at the regional level. Interrupting himself in the middle of the
long list of projects he and his colleagues have accomplished, he suddenly
stops with a modest, "I guess the center has made a small contribution to
all of these fields."
Olinda is famous for its sunshine, a butterscotch heat in which plants grow
to maturity in days instead of seasons. The Luiz Freire Cultural Center,
in keeping with its location, has brightened the prospects for people who
participate in its programs. It is as if the windows of the house let in
hope as well as light.
Teaching Reading to Reading Teachers
A classroom door opens onto a circle of teachers. Carmen Lucia Bandeira, who
has taught at the center since 1978, is leading a discussion on the power of
narrative, and the talk expands into how reading has made powerful changes in
the lives of
the group.
"We started this particular project in 1991, and its popularity has increased
every year," she said. "We had a literature discussion group for teachers who
wanted to upgrade their knowledge about current books and literacy teaching
strategies, but as soon as we started reading passages together out loud in
the class, it was clear that these teachers needed foundational literacy work.
They couldn't get through a page without making several mistakes and they
didn't understand what they were reading."
In groups of 25 to 30, these adults start with children's literature and
move on to novels dealing with topics important to them, including the history
of Brazil. The group discussed in a cathartic manner not only their own
deficiencies, but also their failures as students in the educational
system. Coming from indigenous and low-income backgrounds, the teachers
say that they never felt respected in school. Their own instructors, who
mostly
came from similar situations, wanted to instill an "advanced" and
"modern" culture in the schoolchildren; undfortunately, along the way, no
value was attributed to the rich contributions of the varied people who
live in northeastern Brazil.
Connecting Literature to Real Life
Strengthening their own literacy has improved their teaching, according to the
educators. They know what they enjoy reading and can imagine better the
skill level and interests of their students. Now they realize that
involving the personal lives of their students in the book, making that
essential connection between the world of "literature," which sometimes
feels so distant, and "real life," can construct a bridge to lifelong
literacy. When a child sees a book and feels intimidated, a love of
reading is difficult to foster. When a child sees himself or herself in a
picture, or can identify with the plot of a journey, a fight, the death of
a pet, then and only then will he or she click onto the idea that "Ler é
bom," the theme of the center: Reading Is Good.
The literature discussion groups have affected other school staff members,
too; they have expanded to include janitorial staff, secretaries, and kitchen
workers. Inclusion is
key to the democratization of the literacy-teaching process at the Luiz Freire
Cultural Center.
"One of my students, named Grinaucia, was the cook in her school says
Bandeira. "She was a timid woman, really shy. As she studied
cultural identity through literature, learning about the history of
Africans and how they came to Brazil, she underwent a
tremendous rebirth, we could all see it. She literally grew, physically, and
she looked totally different as she gained self-esteem. Today, she is
teaching reading herself."
Reading Is Good
In Brazil, many teachers in areas with few resources have only a high school
diploma. Class divisions pervade the country and the lingering
trauma from the military dictatorship has kept low-income people "in their
place" to the extent that they perceive higher education as out of reach
and out of their rights.
Eduardo Homen counters, "Everything we do strengthens the process of
affirmation of citizen participation. When people participate in the
construction of democracy,
they begin to analyze their own, concrete realities. We believe that
reading is good, in whatever language and whatever location. We believe
that indigenous people have the right to their own culture everywhere
on the planet. And we believe that information is an inalienable right of
every human being." It may be late in coming, but this is good news for the
center's students.
Bandeira leads her students through a two-phase process: first, elementary
reading, interpreting texts, expanding vocabulary and second, writing, in
which the students create individually and in groups. They write pieces
that are personal, professional, and technical, covering the many needs
they will encounter in their lives. "The majority are women," she says,
"and work for all kinds of schools – municipal, church, in towns and
cities." Most have never written anything for or about themselves before.
The Joy of Reading
"They have been experiencing a great emptiness without knowing it, not
reading. It is so exciting to see them discover the joy of reading and to see
how impassioned they become themselves when they put their learning to
practical use." Bandeira estimates that her project has reached close to 3,000
educators and school employees in its seven years, serving 865 schools.
Since these "new and improved" teachers have
returned to their classrooms with the fire of literacy in their eyes, they
report that kids actually reach for books during free time instead of
automatically dashing for the sunny playground. One reason for this might
be that the teachers now enjoy reading, and grab for a book or magazine
where they might have once stared out the window, wondering what they were
doing in such a thankless job.
One of the innovations Bandeira has introduced are "Reading Suitcases",
to instill the love of reading into teachers and students. She shows
her adult pupils how to decorate a used valise with pictures and paint and
then fill it with colorful children's books. In front of the class,
Bandeira slowly opens the suitcase, revealing the mini-library as if it
were a treasure chest full of gold or bubble gum. Children are entranced
by the idea of travel, and the metaphor of using books to explore new
worlds lures some reluctant readers to reach their hand into the suitcase
and pull out a "ticket" to literacy.
Literacy in the Kitchen
"I teach a six-month course called 'Five Hundred Years of Fire,'" says Liz
Ramos. Her students range from fourteen to twenty-one years old, and in
learning about the history and practice of cooking around the world, the
young people study geography, math, and cultural identity. "We learn
about the indigenous foods of Brazil and then move outward to explore the
diverse culinary inheritances that have enriched us from Portugual, Italy,
Africa, the Middle East, Japan." She sighs humorously when she answers a
question
about which aspect of the course the students enjoy most: "The food, of
course! Basically, these kids love to eat. We meet for five hours a day,
Monday through Friday, and we make a different dish probably three times a
week. It's their favorite part, the cooking, but what they are getting
out of it, too, is reading."
Ramos starts her course with a children's book on the story of Noah's Ark.
The class utilizes this leitmotif and identifies their own goal of
"gathering the goods of the earth to preserve for future generations" in
addition to "traveling through books." Simultaneously, the students are
gaining practical knowledge in food preparation. These skills may secure
them employment before the forty days of Lent rather than after forty days
of rain. "Carnival," she says with a grin, "is a hot time in Olinda."
The students study fractions in math in order to calculate how to transform a
family-sized recipe into enough to feed the throngs. "Two thousand
visitors a day can pass by our street," she marvels. "Our students have
their one big chance of the whole year to make some money in the 'informal
economy' by selling refreshments to tourists, and by the time they finish
this course, they are ready."
A Pernambuco State of Mind
Eliane Amorim, another Luiz Freire instructor, concurs that transformations
take place in her room, too. Knocking on her door reveals a space in which
the indigenous culture of Pernambuco (the state in which the town of Olinda
is located is taken from the name of the local tribe) is integrated into
all aspects of study, an environment all too rare in Brazil.
"It is my hope that by leading indigenous teachers to recognize and value
their own
language, their own culture, that all children who receive education from
these teachers will eventually share with each other the wealth that each
one brings to school and to life," she says.
One way in which indigenous culture is honored is the use of group
activities instead of purely individual, one-student-one-desk work. Amorim
spends a lot of time on the floor, sitting in circles, which shows respect
for the students and lets them know that each of their faces is important,
that they are being seen, that they are part of an important communal
effort called "learning" in which each member can contribute his or her
valuable opinion.
Amorim has been integrating art into her classes, concentrating on
articles woven from "caroa," a reed. Her students construct masks
representing not only the ancient spirits of the sea, the harvest, and
other icons, but also masks of themselves.
and learn about traditional customs that have been left behind with the
advance of the Information Age. The product of her teachers-as-learners will
be a book
on indigenous mythology and history, researched and written at the Luiz
Freire center. When it is published in 1999, the book will be distributed
to the schools connected to the center and made available throughout Brazil.
Fending Off 'Cultural Imperialism'
One comment that came from several of the teachers concerned cultural
imperialism infiltrating Olinda from the North, especially the United
States, and, more surprisingly, from the rest of Brazil. "One of our
primary reasons to preserve and honor the indigenous way of life and the
Afro-Brazilian culture of the Pernambuco area," says Liz Ramos, is that it
is grave danger of being swallowed up by music and myth from Salvador, Rio,
and Sao Paulo. Stronger in population, better-publicized, she says, "These
larger cities have beautiful songs and dances and stories – but we need our
music
and myths to survive this onslaught." Pernambuco is defining itself through
the
contemplation of teachers who were taught to look outward to find value and
are now seeing the sun reflect their own shining heritage.
The house is full, and the bright light of Olinda illuminates the future of
democratic education, thanks to the Luiz Freire Cultural Center. Ramos invites
visitors to come on Sundays to the afternoon parties that the center hosts in
the garden.
"We play Pernambuco music, the students perform and play drums, we dance
our traditional dances, and of course, we serve lots and lots of delicious
food."
The Luiz Freire Cultural Center knows how to nourish the whole person,
making students, teachers, and guests soon feel at home by recognizing what
a special place their home really is.
Needs:
The library needs books in Portuguese and English, and children's picture
books without words. All of the teachers would love to host exchanges with teachers from other
countries or, indeed, to travel and see projects happening in other places. Furthermore, they would
like to know how other institutions are integrating culture and literacy training for students of
all ages. They need a website to spread the news of their work.
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January 1999 Journal Home Page