Popular Education

Popular Education has been used as a tool to do raise people's consciousness to become more aware of how their personal experiences are linked with larger social issues. The theory was  expressed by Paulo Freire in "Pedagogy of the Oppressed."  Freire worked to empower peasants in Brazil through literacy. Since that time it has been used for a great many purposes throughout the world.

Freire distinguishes his approach to education from the traditional "banking" approach where participants are treated as empty vessels that must be filled with information.  The underlying implication of the traditional approach is that students are "uneducated" and in need of knowledge that can come only from teachers or experts.  This need creates a dependency and reinforces a sense of powerlessness.  People learn to distrust themselves, their knowledge and intuitions and this can lead to confusion.  They often feel there is something wrong but they are not sure what.  Freire's method encourages participants to see themselves as a fount of information and knowledge about the real world.  When they are encouraged to work with knowledge they have from their own experience they can develop strategies together to change their immediate situations.

Popular Education as a cycle of stages:

• Beginning with people's own experiences;
• Moving from experience to analysis;
• Moving from Analysis to encouraging collective action;
• Reflection and evaluation of its own process.

In this model everyone teaches and everyone learns in a collective process of creating new knowledge.

And furthermore, it is a type of education which:

• takes place within a democratic framework;
• is based on what learners are concerned about;
• poses questions and problems;
• examines unequal power relations in society;
• encourages everyone to learn and everyone to teach;
• involves high levels of participation;
• includes people's emotions, actions, intellects and creativity;
• uses varied activities.

Steps for Analysis

• Identify and name the issue of concern
• organize information in such a way as to clarify the problems and the possible solutions and their implications
• trace the general causes or effects of the issues, as well as focussing on specific factors of identified concerns
• see the connections between personal problems and larger social forces and the connections between the forces themselves
• see social issues within the context of political economic forces and examining their interconnections and systematic causes
• Gain a larger perspective on the issues by combining individual understanding and experience into a collective understanding
• understand the dynamics of power relationships and the role of power in effective action for social change
• discovering new questions that need asking

What is strategy?

• suggesting possible actions
• identifying the forces and factors contributing to the success or failure of a particular action
• helping groups examine the array of forces to see if the negative forces can be reduced and the positive forces increased.
• visioning looking at the future as well as exploring the consequences of that vision
• helping groups make decisions on action plans
• framework for analysis and action
• develop a sense of community
• develop and maintain a working group

Asses the Real Situation

In this model everyone teaches and everyone learns in a collective process of creating new knowledge.