Mere Rhetoric

Paulo Freire  Welcome to Mere Rhetoric, the podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, people and movements who have shaped rhetorical history. I’m Mary Hedengren, we have Samantha and Morgan in the booth and today we get to talk about one of the most influencial figures in the so-called “social turn” of composition.     Paulo Freire was born into a middle-class family, but the Depression hit them hard, and soon he was familiar enough with the very worst of poverty. He noted, later in life, that his poverty, his hunger impacted the way that he learned: "I didn't understand anything because of my hunger. I wasn't dumb. It wasn't lack of interest. My social condition didn't allow me to have an education. Experience showed me once again the relationship between social class and knowledge" (Freire as quoted in Stevens, 2002). Eventually, things got better: the Freire’s got money, got food and young Paulo got a good education, eventually becoming a state director of the department of education. In this po