 The Educational Matrix: The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In 1970, after nearly two decades of literacy work in the Brazilian favelas and poor sectors of Brazil, Paulo Freire published his paradigm shifting text Pedagogia del oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1970), which was followed in 1972 by his Education for the Praxis of Liberation. At the core of Freire’s work were three key ideas: if the people are to overcome their dependence, they can only do so through their own agency, by becoming the subject of their own liberation; to become a subject of one’s own liberation means to engage in a process of conscientização, or consciousness raising, that takes place through a pedagogy that rejects the notion of the learner as a passive receptacle and instead departs from the fundamental realization that learning is a dynamic process. Two key notions of Freire’s pedagogy of liberation were that (1) teaching requires listening to the people, and (2) schooling means life, that is, learning is both indispensable to life and it takes place in the midst of living. Freire’s key phrase “conscientização” goes on to be appropriated by liberation philosophers as their own goal: philosophy is at the service of the raising of both individual and collective consciousness.