Upon its release, Pedagogy of the Oppressed had an immediate impact on the field of educational studies in the United States. In 1971 it was already described as "a small classic of pedagogical theory", and awarded a "high status" in academic circles.[10]: 378 In some countries under military dictatorships the book was both burned and banned, and Freire was forbidden to travel to several countries in Latin America and Africa after his ideas were taken up by radical revolutionary groups.[6]: 127
Shortly after its release, Edgar Z. Friedenberg wrote that the book's weaknesses were its "pedantic style, the consistent underestimate of the opposition and the very peculiar avoidance of Freire's own extensive experience as a source of illustrative material". Friedenberg said that a positive aspect of the book was Freire's recognition that formal education in the Brazilian setting is "counter-revolutionary and oppressive".[10]: 379
In his 1989 book Life in Schools, Peter McLaren emphasized that the teacher's politics are foundational to the pedagogy articulated in Freire's book.[11] Building on McLaren, others said that the fourth chapter is the lynchpin holding the project together, and that the emphasis on the first two chapters severs Freire's method from his ideology and his politics from his pedagogy. The reasons for its neglect stem from the chapter's explicit concern with the revolutionary party and leadership, which Derek R. Ford argued flows from the Leninist conception of the party.[12] Tyson Lewis similarly said that "Freire himself clearly saw his pedagogy as a tool to be used within revolutionary organization to mediate the various relationships between the oppressed and the leaders of resistance."[13]
Freire was criticized by feminists for his use of sexist language in Pedagogy of the Oppressed,[6]: 127–128 [14] and it was revised for the 1995 edition to avoid sexism.[14] Freire's later writings reflect the impact of this criticism, and use more inclusive language.[6]: 128
Freire's work was one inspiration for Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed.[15]
In his introduction to the 30th anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Donaldo Macedo, a former colleague of Freire and University of Massachusetts Boston professor, called the book a revolutionary text, and said that people in totalitarian states risk punishment for reading it.[1]: 16 During the apartheid period in South Africa, the book was banned. Clandestine copies of the book were distributed underground as part of the "ideological weaponry" of various revolutionary groups like the Black Consciousness Movement.[16]
In 2006, Pedagogy of the Oppressed came under criticism over its use by the Mexican American Studies Department Program at Tucson High School. In 2010, the Arizona State Legislature passed House Bill 2281, enabling the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction to restrict state funding to public schools with ethnic studies programs, effectively banning the programs. Tom Horne, who was Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction at the time, criticized the programs for "teaching students that they are oppressed".[17] The book was among seven titles officially confiscated from Mexican American studies classrooms, sometimes in front of students, by the Tucson Unified School District after the passing of HB 2281.[18]
In a 2009 article for the conservative City Journal, Sol Stern wrote that Pedagogy of the Oppressed ignores the traditional touchstones of Western education (e.g. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey, or Maria Montessori) and contains virtually none of the information typically found in traditional teacher education (e.g., no discussion of curriculum, testing, or age-appropriate learning). On the contrary, Freire rejects traditional education as "official knowledge" that intends to oppress.[19] Stern also wrote in 2006 that heirs to Freire's ideas have taken them to mean that since all education is political: "leftist math teachers who care about the oppressed have a right, indeed a duty, to use a pedagogy that, in Freire's words, 'does not conceal—in fact, which proclaims—its own political character'".[20]
A 2019 article in British internet magazine Spiked said that "In 2016, the Open Syllabus Project catalogued the 100 most requested titles on its service by English-speaking universities: the only Brazilian on its list was Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed."[21]
