Centre for Popular Education and Human Rights Ghana (CEPEHRG) Products How do we understand Popular Education? Literally popular education means education by the people, with the people, and for the people. The term has gained currency in range of contexts. Here are two examples. In the eighteenth century working class people in England did not have the right to formal education. Various working people's associations were established to campaign against what they perceived as an injustice. At that time, many educators and members of the aristocracy seriously argued that education would confuse and agitate working people. Some authorities conceded that education for working people may be useful so long as it was devoted only to basic skills development. Working people's associations struggling against these views developed their own forms of education - 'rag' magazines, study groups, and community activities. In the early 1960s Paulo Freire in Brazil developed an innovative approach to literacy education. Freire believed that learning literacy should mean much more than simply learning how to read and write. He was working with landless peasants. Friere argued that educators should also help people to analyse their situation. Friere's students learned to read and write through discussion of basic problems they themselves were experiencing, such as no access to agricultural land. As the causes of their problems were considered, the students analysed and discussed what action could be taken to change their situation. Friere coined the term 'conscientization' to describe this type of education. Today popular education has a similar poignancy to the examples above. Educators can and do make an important contribution to helping people take more control of their lives and struggle against injustices such as poverty, inequality, discrimination, and environmental destruction. Having said this, the Centre for Popular Education at UTS is not defined by any particular ideological perspective. We welcome and enjoy discussion and debate about how various values and perspectives can inform popular education. The following is from the International Popular Education Network Popular education is: rooted in the real interests and struggles of ordinary people overtly political and critical of the status quo committed to progressive social and political change in the interests of a fairer and more egalitarian society. Popular education has the following characteristics: its curriculum comes out of the concrete experience and material interests of people in communities of resistance and struggle its pedagogy is collective, focused primarily on group as distinct from individual learning and development it attempts to forge a direct connection between education and social change. Centre for popular education

What is Popular Education?

MORE ABOUT POPULAR EDUCATION.POPULAR EDUCATION
Popular education is education of, for, and by the people. The term is a translation from Spanish, where "people" refers to the marginalized and exploited sectors - which in South and Central America is the majority of the population. Fundamental to popular education is a commitment to improving the conditions of the poor and oppressed.

Popular education is an approach that critically examines and learns from the lessons of past struggles, and from concrete everyday situations in the present. It is a deeply democratic process, equipping communities to themselves name and create the vision of the alternatives they are struggling for.

Popular education values and respects people as their own experts, and challenges the notion that the educator or organizer's role is as an expert who works "for" people. It is based on the belief that people themselves have sufficient knowledge and that they can work out the solutions to their own problems.

Popular education is carried out within a political vision that sees women and men at the community and grassroots level as the primary agent for social change. It equips people to define their own struggles and make their voices heard. It involves a process whereby a group collectively analyses its problems and works collectively to solve them, including identifying the resources and skills they need. Popular education develops within this process the consciousness of and commitment to the interests of the most marginalized as part of the struggle.

Our commitment to popular education has been influenced by our experience working with women at a grassroots level in Canada, and by our involvement with popular educators from Central America and in the international women's movement.

Popular education brings ongoing "consciousness-raising"to organizing. It shifts the emphasis from organizing for single events to organizing a group of isolated individuals into a collective of people committed to acting together for justice. As the Filipino popular educator Ed de la Torre warned, "if organizing includes only mobilizing for rallies, demonstrations and protests, then when the space for organizing is again constricted there's not enough strength of conviction, clarity, and unity among the people. Because the issues never sank deeper, people join another power (often right-wing forces) when the power of the protest movements wanes."

The recent "popularity" of popular education brings with it the risk that it will be reduced to group dynamics and participatory training techniques. This is a misuse and a misreading of what popular education is about. Popular education is part of the wider process of organizing for social change and movement building.



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Popular education has always had an intimate connection to organizing for social change. In the early 1960's, Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, began by using the principles of dialogue and critical consciousness-raising - which are fundamental to popular education - to teach literacy to peasants struggling for land reform in Brazil. Freire argued that action was the source of knowledge, not the reverse, and that education, to be transformative, involved a process of dialogue based on action and reflection on action.
Base Christian communities throughout Latin America, inspired by the biblical concept of liberation, applied some of the same methods of action-reflection identified by Friere. By the late '60s and '70s, popular education had become a key component in national liberation struggles throughout South and Central America, and in the Philippines and South Africa.

The Nicaraguan Revolution brought international recognition to popular education. Nicaragua adopted popular education as the methodological framework for its successful literacy and health campaigns in the early '80s. At the same time, organizers began to use popular education in movements in Central America and Mexico, including the urban poor movements, and the campisino, indigenous, and youth movements.

In Canada one of the historical antecedents of popular education was the Antigonish Movement in the Atlantic provinces, where education and study circles were central to the organizing of fisher and farmer co-ops as early as the 19302. In the United States the Highlander Center in Tennessee - committed to the civil rights movement, labour organizing, and recently, environmental struggles - is also an example of how education is critical for effective organizing.

As the new context of neo-liberalism and global capitalism redefines our political struggles, movement organizers are using popular education in new ways. At a 1994 gathering of Central American popular educations in Honduras, participants agreed that popular education should be central to the strategy of building genuine democracy and "poder local" (local power) at the local and municipal levels throughout the region. Feminist popular educators who met internationally at UN preparatory meetings for Beijing and at Beijing developed a common strategy of using popular education to educate women about their basic economic, social, and cultural rights as women in order for them to formulate, demand, and create alternatives based on their needs. In North America there is a a new interest in popular education within the labour movement, as more and more unions look for methods to move from a servicing model to an organizing model of unionism.

FEMINIST POPULAR EDUCATION

In the last ten years feminists have developed a critique of popular education. Like other liberation theories written by men, traditional popular education challenges class oppression but ignores the dynamics of gender and race. South and Central American feminists were the first to challenge popular education language which seemed to exclude women by assuming a male generic in terms such as el pueblo (the people) and el Hombre Nuevo (the New Man). At the same time, feminist popular educators began to educate and organize around women's issues, such as sexuality, domestic violence, reproductive rights, and community needs for housing, clean water, and electricity.

By the early '90s, North and South American women's movements had begun to integrate issues of race, sexuality, and ability into organizing, and to educate around women's human rights - the right to a life without violence, to democracy and citizenship rights, and to reproductive, labour, economic, and social rights.

Feminist popular educators bring a shift in content, theory, and practice to organizing. For example, the impact of structural adjustment programs in the '80s on women and their communities made feminists realize that most organizing against Free Trade and Structural Adjustment Programs had failed to address the reality of women's community and domestic lives. Women were feeling the effects of restructuring most in their invisible work in the home and community and in their undervalued work in the informal economy. Yet these areas were being ignored in organizing.

Feminist popular education, in both the North and South, has incorporated a gender analysis of the economy into its framework. This allows it to focus on the many sites where both women and men confront economic oppression - the level of everyday life. It starts from and returns to the realities of daily life, including the unpaid work of caring for children and maintaining a family, and providing basic services in the community.

Feminist popular education has also influenced the methods and tools we bring to organizing. It involves focusing on the whole person - the physical, spiritual, and emotional, as well as the mental dimension. It poses that organizing, to be effective, must touch and acknowledge fears and wounds, as well as the dreams and aspirations of women and men. It is often these deeper levels that determine whether women and men will act. Organizing must do more than get people to think critically; it mus wake up bodies and spirits numbed by overwork, exhaustion, or the tyranny of the dominant culture.

ANTI-RACISM AND FEMINIST POPULAR EDUCATION

Just as the traditional class-based approach of popular education has had to take gender into account in its framework, so too has feminist popular education needed to more consciously incorporate an anti-racist framework into its approach. This is especially true in Canada where women of colour have taken the lead in challenging the limitations of a women's movement locked into a colour-blind version of feminist analysis and practice.

The anti-racist critique of popular education has revealed the limitations of past organizing that not only excluded large groups of marginalized people, but also reinforced racism in its very practices. One result has been more sharing of the histories of resistance and organizing among and across communities.

Feminist popular education practice must challenge all power and privilege - be it gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, age, or any other difference - that is used to create and maintain unequal power relations in a group, organization, community, or movement. As different social movements incorporate popular education into their practice, they bring deeper awareness of the politics of exclusion and the importance of naming and claiming identity. The gay and lesbian movement is now challenging the heterosexist framework of popular education, while a growing international youth movement is challenging how popular education has largely excluded the experiences and perspectives of youth.

Popular education involves a continuing process of self-criticism and renewal. It is a method and approach that can never be rigidly fixed. We are always learning, always experiencing changes, and always reflecting on these experiences to see how we can improve our practice.

ORGANIZING

We define popular education as a feminist and anti-racist practice of organizing. This means that organizing based in feminist popular education principles will:

encourage participation
develop democratic practices
promote participants control of the process and actions
focus action around the issues in people's daily lives
involve the entire person, including the heart, mind, body, and spirit
respect the histories and cultures of those involved
take power relationships into account
integrate a gender and race perspective
challenge all privileges (e.g. race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, age)
affirm identity
emphasize movement and/or organizational base-building
have long-term goals and visions
Organizing supported by feminist popular education will affect what fights we take up, how we act, whom we include, and the methods we use to reach out. Organizing guided by these principles helps to address two key interrelated challenges many organizations now face: how to make our organizations more democratic, and how to get people involved who will work to make the organization represent their interests. If we want to build the base of our organizations with active and involve constituents who believe everyone can make a difference, we need to understand and practise organizing in this way.


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