Is popular education still relevant today?
What do youth and cultural centers, youth hostels, and scouting have in common? Each of these movements or associations is linked to what is known as popular education, which aims to improve the functioning of society without the support of traditional institutions.
Sylvain Wagnon, University of Montpellier and Mathieu Depoil, Paul Valéry University – Montpellier III
But how can we define this non-school-based educational approach more precisely? Popular education has a history, principles, and specific practices. What does it represent today? How can it be a truly innovative political and educational project in the21st century?
Knowledge for empowerment
Historians of popular education emphasize the vagueness of its scientific definition, while affirming its importance in understanding our educational history. Is it simply an approach aimed at giving as many people as possible access to knowledge? Popular education is much more than that.
As both a component of continuing education and lifelong learning, with the ambition of making education accessible to all, it can be defined as a desire for individual and collective empowerment through active and concrete practices.
Enabling everyone to access knowledge and learning in order to empower themselves and transform society is an ideal that emerged from the French Revolution. However, it was at the beginning ofthe 19th century, with the rise of industrial and capitalist society, that the ambition to educate the people and empower workers began to take concrete shape.
This emerging popular education took many forms. The Republican movement, in creating the Ligue de l'enseignement(Teaching League) in 1866, focused on providing guidance to young people outside of school hours, even before the development of secular and compulsory education.
The labor union movement offers political education for workers through labor exchanges and popular universities. For their part, Christian movements found their own popular education associations, such as the Young Christian Workers (YCW) and the Young Catholic Farmers (YCF).
A golden age?
The rise of popular education became apparent with the introduction of paid holidays in 1936 and the progressive policies of the Popular Front implemented by the Minister of National Education, Jean Zay, and the Secretary of State for Youth and Sports, Léo Lagrange.
This marked the beginning of the rise of popular education with the creation of the Cemea (Centres for Training in Active Education Methods) in 1937 and numerous summer camp associations, which provided spaces for young people to learn and socialize. The movement continued after the Liberation with the creation of the Fédération nationale des Francas (National Federation of Francs and Franches Camarades) and the Maisons des Jeunes et de la Culture (MJC), which perpetuated and amplified this popular education movement promoting access to culture and knowledge for all.
At the same time, popular education became institutionalized. In 1953, the National Institute for Youth and Popular Education (INJEP) brought together the various movements and created an official status for professional facilitators. While becoming more established, popular education seemed to lose sight of its socially emancipatory nature by confining itself to the sociocultural sphere.
New areas of action?
In 1998, the creation of Attac illustrated this return to a political conception of popular education. The social damage exacerbated by the current health crisis requires, more than ever, an awareness of the growing inequalities in our society and the worsening poverty in France.
ATD Fourth World and Emmaus, to name just two iconic organizations, have been actively involved for decades in the fight against social inequality through popular education and training initiatives.
Should we therefore see it, as highlighted in a May 2019 report by the Economic and Social Council, as a "modern and pioneering concept" and a "permanent laboratory for innovation and active methods"? Because today we are witnessing a revival, a turning point, according to sociologist Christian Maurel, or perhaps a return to the very roots of popular education.
In May 2021, the INJEP report on the structure of popular education outlined the many possible areas of intervention for popular education inthe 21st century: continuing education, popular universities, but also support for urban policy measures, the fight against inequality, and all forms of discrimination.
Popular education is rooted in all areas and represents an educational lever for all social categories and all generations, as exemplified by the work of the Federation of Social Centers on aging.
A social project for the 21st century
Due to its history, popular education has its own educational figures, such as Fernand Oury and Gisèle de Failly. It also has its own teaching methods, such as decision-making—“allowing individuals to decide what concerns them”— social pedagogy, theorized in France by Laurent Ott, among others, and critical pedagogy inspired by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.
The presence of Philippe Meirieu, a leading figure in education, as national president of Cemea is symbolic of this reaffirmation that education can be at the heart of a social project.
But the strength of popular education also lies in this link between active methods and political education, emphasizing the need to rethink a vibrant democracy where all citizens have a place, can take action, and influence decisions.
The fields of action for popular education in the 21st centurye century are therefore countless. The desire to create activities for direct democracy, specific forms of public expression such as gestured lectures or new educational spaces, such as adventure playgrounds which are redefining the place of children in the city, are just a few examples of this educational and political dynamism.
Sylvain Wagnon, Professor of Education Sciences, Faculty of Education, University of Montpellier and Mathieu Depoil, PhD student in Education Sciences at Liderf – University of Montpellier, Paul Valéry University – Montpellier III
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.