Book Main Arguments || We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, Myles Horton and Paulo Freire

 In We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, Myles Horton and Paulo Freire draw on more than a century of collective experience in popular education to articulate a radical philosophy of adult education and social transformation.

 Five core arguments that form the foundation of their dialogue:

1. Education Is Never Neutral

Horton and Freire insist that education is inherently political. There is no such thing as a completely neutral educational system; claims of neutrality can, in practice, serve to preserve the status quo and leave existing structures of inequality unquestioned. Education either functions as an instrument for integrating individuals into the logic of the dominant system, producing conformity, or becomes what Freire calls the “practice of freedom” empowering people to critically understand and transform their world.

Education, therefore, is not simply about transferring knowledge. It is also about how people come to understand their place in society, recognize structures of power, and develop the capacity to act upon their reality.

2. Knowledge Emerges from Practice: “We Make the Road by Walking”

Borrowing the title’s central metaphor from the poet Antonio Machado, Horton and Freire argue that theory and practice are dialectically inseparable. Knowledge is not simply an abstract body of expertise handed down from above by institutional “experts.” Rather, it emerges through action, lived social experience, dialogue, and collective reflection.

This is the basis of praxis: people act upon the world, reflect on that action, and return to practice with a deeper understanding. Knowledge is therefore continually produced and transformed through engagement with reality. We do not simply discover a predetermined road; we make the road by walking.

3. Start with People’s Knowledge—but Do Not Stay There

Liberatory education must always begin with the lived experiences, culture, language, and existing knowledge of learners. Educators must recognize and respect “popular knowledge” rather than treating learners as empty vessels waiting to be filled with the knowledge of experts.

But beginning with popular knowledge does not mean remaining there. It is a starting point, not a stopping point. The educator’s task is to walk alongside learners and help them move beyond immediate experience and common-sense understandings toward a more critical analysis of the social, political, and structural forces that shape their lives.

The aim is neither to dismiss popular knowledge nor to romanticize it, but to develop it through dialogue, questioning, reflection, and critical inquiry.

4. The Educator Must Intervene Without Manipulating

Freire and Horton reject both authoritarian indoctrination and passive, “laissez-faire” facilitation. The educator has a duty not to be neutral and must actively intervene by asking challenging questions, introducing new perspectives, and bringing greater political and critical clarity to the educational process.

Yet intervention must never become manipulation or dogma. The educator does not replace one form of authority with another by imposing predetermined conclusions upon learners. Instead, the educator acts as an “impatiently patient” co-learner—balancing authority with freedom and teaching with learning.

The purpose of educational intervention is ultimately to foster autonomy and critical agency, enabling people to arrive at their own understanding and participate in transforming their circumstances.

5. Popular Education Is a Catalyst for Grassroots Structural Change

For Horton and Freire, genuine social transformation cannot depend solely on reforming formal schooling systems, particularly when those systems reproduce dominant ideologies and existing relations of power. Radical change requires forms of grassroots popular education that connect learning directly to the struggles of communities.

Highlander’s Citizenship Schools and Freire’s Culture Circles illustrate this approach. Literacy, education, and political learning become connected to struggles for civil rights, labor rights, citizenship, and community organization. Education thus moves beyond the classroom and becomes part of collective political action.

The ultimate purpose of popular education is not simply to educate people about the world, but to enable them to understand their capacity to act within it—to become subjects rather than objects of history, to challenge structures that constrain them, and to participate democratically in remaking their society.