Topic for 2018/19b:  Popular Education and Social Struggle in Latin America. Popular education builds on the values of solidarity, inclusion, and respect for human rights. Its critical pedagogy and radical education philosophies arm learners with skills and knowledge which many see as vital to the construction of new forms of anti-capitalist politics and social movements. Popular education exists in both formal and informal education environments and characterizes the informal learning that underpins and emerges from protests and social movements. It challenges dominant education approaches and formal educational systems which critics claim help to reproduce existing unjust social conditions. Throughout the course, students compare popular education models with formal educational systems. The latter are legacies of Latin America’s colonial past and driven by present-day state agendas.

 

This course examines the development of popular education in Latin America since the 1960s.  Students learn about popular education’s philosophical and theoretical assumptions as well as its pedagogical practices. The course first looks historically at the roots of popular education and liberation theology in the history of social protest in Brazil, El Salvador, Chiapas, Mexico, and then at contemporary popular education in Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, and Guatemala. The course examines how popular education programs address the social, economic, gender, environmental, and linguistic-justice issues faced by groups within marginalized and excluded communities in Latin America. Students become well versed in a variety of educational theories that are rooted in popular education and fall within the tradition of social justice education.

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