(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL dossier spécial sur
l'éducation populaire - Theory: What is popular education, exactly?
(fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
It is not indoctrination, this is not the socio-cultural animation, this is not the
"citizenism" ... but then, what is it exactly is it? --------- The principle of popular
education is to promote, outside the traditional education system, education for social
progress. ---- Its concepts pillars emancipation; awareness; the development of the power
to act and social transformation. ---- It combines personal axes, collective and policy.
---- Away from the paternalistic victimization and humanism, it wants to develop the power
to act: inner power, power, power over. All without falling into the opposite extreme: the
culpabilisateur neoliberal slogan like "If you want, you can." ---- Through the popular
education process, it is individually and collectively, to affirm their dignity,
self-educate, awareness of social relations and build a collective force, able to imagine
and act for social transformation.
Two goals for this "own authority," and wish to improve society.
OBJECTIVE 1: "If PERMIT"
Here, it is to gain boldness, creativity, capacity to think for oneself; to question the
state of things as it is; to understand that it is not immutable; to authorize, to feel
entitled to, to feel capable of, not to censor nor autolimiter instead assigned to us by
the social relations, gender, culture of origin; to encourage education of everyone by
everyone, valuing everyone's knowledge.
The first step of emancipation is to become aware of the damage relations of domination
that these are structural (mainly racism, patriarchy, capitalism, heteronormativity) or
group-specific (eg seniority, knowledge ...). This is to "kill the cops that we have in
the head", to use a formula Augusto Boal (the initiator of the Theatre of the
Oppressed[1]) and be free of domination that we have internalized .
Nothing to do, then, with the "personal development" which are overflowing the shelves of
bookstores and which, he suggests ways to be happy despite the sustained domination reports.
Knowing that alienation is not enough. Smokers and smokers know that "smoking seriously
damages health". Women know that the doors of engineering schools are not formally closed
to them. But only awareness, caused by a particular assignment may result in the
empowerment of alienation.
Furthermore, the stigma can result in ownership and a justification for what may seem
infamous: "It is said that about me? I will eventually think of myself, and assume and
even want to be. "
Four levels of awareness
Following Humbert Colette, a teacher near ideas Brazilian Paul Freire, one can identify
four levels of consciousness:
subject consciousness, first of all, entails only helplessness;
the pre-critical consciousness then, leads us to put words to things and situate us in
social relations.
integrative critical conscience pushes us to want to get things moving but without being
willing to question everything.
liberating critical consciousness, finally, we did find that acting in the framework is
not sufficient, and causes us to act collectively to change the setting.
2nd OBJECTIVE: WISH IMPROVEMENT COMPANY
The second purpose of public education is to tempt you - irresistible, if possible - to
improve society.
In this context, it will be to go from inner power to a power, and a power over. He must
free his imagination, daring utopia (a horizon may be unattainable, but which structures
the action) and give yourself achievable goals in terms of action (because it can remove
the power to act, c ' is to tackle something too big for us, on which it has no control).
Efforts must be made to increase the awareness of belonging to a society and to have a
political responsibility within the company. They are practicing democracy and
self-management.
To increase the so-called power of action, it must be put in a dynamic where one will
produce the story, not just the subject. Hence the idea of not stopping at a power, but to
precisely target a power over, which will give the feeling that yes, we can transform society.
DIVERSITY OF STRATEGIES
Just as political action, public education may invest three strategic levels:
1. Without power
Alternative experiments outside the dominant system have exemplary value, even if their
generalization seems impossible: the AMAP will certainly not lead to the extinction of
hypermarkets, the independent press is not going to ruin the big media groups, schools
alternatives will not undermine the basis of Education and the few self-managed
cooperatives that exist will not liquidate the capitalist mode of production.
Nevertheless, these "alternatives in action" are cons-examples, proof that we can do
otherwise, that the capitalist model is not the only possible.
2. Against the power
Opposing the system in place, question it, denounce violence and absurdity, it is also
constitutive of popular education. Political action has effects on society, but even more
on activists and activists, as they embrace a cause, "they kill the cops in the head."
Challenging the system, even the less radical, falls under this approach. It is sometimes
the first step towards revolutionary ideas.
3. With the power
There may be areas of subversion within the system. This is what can practice for example,
with patience and perseverance, partisan and supporters of an educational alternative that
act within the Education, or activists and activists working in self-managing
institutionalized structures called popular education.
Like it or not, these three strategies interact, and that's good. If the separation was
sealed, the risk would be that each is self-sufficient, disconnects a comprehensive
transformation project (for the first), real (for the second) and radical (the third) of
the company.
COUNTER CULTURE AS A CONSUMER PRODUCT
Popular education is often confused with the socio-cultural animation. This is the result
of public policies that neutralized its critical power,
and have achieved that many associations censor themselves to match what was expected of them.
However, popular education has nothing in common with the notion of "leisure", which, as
Jean Foucambert, the French Reading Association, is never that "the time saved on labor
despoiled, time to forget about work, to try to recover. And submit it. "[2]
"Popular education is a cultural practice of resistance, wrote the Belgian teacher
Jean-Pierre Nossent. Or more accurately implementing a culture of resistance. Resistance
to anyone who wants to reduce individuals and social groups to an object for capitalism
that attempts to link the service of consumer goods, both by their inclusion in the system
by excluding certain. "[3]
Culture is a tool for the dignity of peoples. But culture must not hear the production of
"works" by "artists" stamped, as the good people must admire to be recognized as "cultivated".
What matters, again, is to encourage everyone to work. It is less a question of getting
people to "culture" that encourage the expression of their own, or at least their identity.
A TEACHING OF DEMOCRACY
Because they aim to politicize the many, popular education approaches constitute a
pedagogy of democracy.
Is it a "civic" or "citizenism"?
Not at all. Here commonly practiced as civic education, particularly in the school system
aims to maintain order and social peace - useful vote, pick up the paper on the floor,
hold the door to the old lady - Popular Education aims to bring out critics, protest,
protesters. Not to be singular and to pose rebel loudmouth, but to generate collective action.
It is an approach that encourages the rise of people, individually and collectively. It is
based on the memory of struggles and practice living democracy, that is to say
self-management.
"A society without some tolerance vis-à-vis the confliction is not condemned to peace and
harmony, it is condemned to confrontation", said the philosopher Miguel Benasayag in an
interview after the death of Rémi Fraisse Sivens to[4]. And that's true. Because they are
essential to a democratic, popular education always will value the conflictual,
contradictory debates, the complexity of thought and no miracle solutions, solve all the
problems coming from outside.
THE LURE OF "PARTICIPATION"
In the postwar Gaullism has tried to appease the class struggle by encouraging
collaboration between capitalists and wage earners.
It was the creation of works councils, participation in profits, and this sea serpent
called employee share ownership.
May 68 and the decade of "working insubordination" that followed revived the idea that
working people should have more power within the company. In its revolutionary version,
this idea led to the socialist self-management.
In the version against-revolutionary, it led to the "participative management" and its
various gadgets (quality circles, expression groups, project groups ...) that allow to
suck the good ideas of the workers never let her decide on important issues.
In the 1990s, the participatory management strategy has been transposed to the municipal
level, including the experience of the "participatory budget" of Porto Alegre (Brazil).
This was entrusted to district assemblies to decide on what positions would be assigned a
portion of the municipal budget. After a phase of enthusiasm for this experience
instructive elsewhere, social movements have gradually disillusioned. Indeed, in a
capitalist framework without questioning the hoarding of wealth by the propertied classes,
activists and militants of popular neighborhoods noted bitterly that actually allowed them
to "self-manage" the crumbs of the cake . And that the industrial action had been
anesthetized, they were monopolized by file reviews.
Suffice to say that the concept of "participatory democracy", under cover to take a
rejuvenating democracy, is primarily used to manufacture consent.
Adeline (AL northeast Paris)
[1] At the intersection of politics and art, the power of the "theater of the oppressed"
was initiated in Brazil in the 1960s by Augusto Boal. Under different forms, he abandoned
theater stages to project into the street, seeking interaction with viewers via social
nature scenes.
[2] John Foucambert, editorial in the French Reading Association, Reading 87, September 2004.
[3] Jean-Pierre Nossent, "Back to the roots of popular education," Policy No. 51, October
2007.
[4] Miguel Benasayag, Interview by Louis Morice, Nouvelobs.com October 29, 2014.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Theorie-Qu-est-ce-que-l-education
