Teaching as an Act of Love: Reflections on Paulo Freire and His Contributions to Our Lives and Our Work

Abstract

In this paper I want to speak to the experience of love as I came to understand it through my work and friendship with Freire. I want to write about a political and radicalized form of love that is never about absolute consensus, or unconditional acceptance, or unceasing words of sweetness, or endless streams of hugs and kisses. Instead, it is a love that I experienced as unconstricted, rooted in a committed willingness to struggle persistently with purpose in our life and to intimately connect that purpose with what he called our “true vocation” – to be human.