First Enliven, Then Enlighten: Popular Education and the
Pursuit of Social Justice1
Lee Williams
e-mail: leewill@utk.edu
Department of Sociology
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN
Contents
Introduction
Education for Social Change
Highlander and the Institute on Education for Social
Change
Reflections on the Workshop
Theoretical Discussion
Popular Education and the University
Endnotes
References
Abstract
For educators in colleges and universities who are interested in doing
education for social justice, popular education provides some valuable
insights. I start with the question: What lessons can academics working
in college classrooms learn from the theory and praxis of popular education?
In the essay I briefly describe the nature of popular education. I then
examine the reflections and experiences of a group of practicing popular
educators by presenting an ethnography of a Highlander Research and Education
Center workshop on Education for Social Change for Emerging Popular Education
Centers. The ethnography is followed by an analysis of several of the main
elements of popular education that allow educators to deal with the third
dimension of power — the control of ideas. I conclude with some of my own
thoughts on how popular education challenges educators at colleges and
universities. The importance of the lessons learned in the workshop for
social scientists in academic settings is grounded in the inter-connections
among free spaces, resistance, and the control and production of knowledge.
Introduction
Sociology has long been concerned with the relationship between the institution
of education and the process of social change. Changes in sociological
ideas and in the kinds of questions that have been asked about education
do not take place in a vacuum: they occur because of wider political economic
changes in society. Recent developments such as the debates on multiculturalism,
the contraction of manufacturing industry and the move to an information
society, and low literacy rates have forced questions of the content and
purposes of education onto the public agenda. Thus, sociological questions
and research about education are an important part of a wider public debate
both about the kind of society we live in now and about its possible future
development.
As a graduate student in sociology I have searched for avenues to learn
more about education and social change. While I found some openings in
the university curriculum, my exploration of praxis-oriented approaches
to education led me outside the scholarly community, where I discovered
community-based popular education. There, for the first time in my graduate
school experience, I found authentic connections between critical theory
and praxis in doing education for social change.2 Popular education
grows from a long and under explored tradition whereby working class people
have created and maintained their own free spaces in which to do popular
education for democracy.
Social scientists as educators in primary schools, technical schools, and
colleges and universities have a great deal to learn from participatory
approaches to education and research. I concur with Henry Giroux that "theory
must be seen as the production of forms of discourse that arise from various
specific social sites. Such theoretical discourse may arise from the universities,
from peasant communities, from worker councils, or from within various
social movements. Each of these spaces of resistance provides critical
insights into the nature of domination and the possibilities for social
and self emancipation of people, and they do so from the historical and
social particularities that govern their meaning" (Giroux 1988: 119). The
social spheres in which knowledge production and democratic collective
action are fostered at the grassroots level are the spaces where sociologists
can move from a pragmatic to a critical approach to education for social
change. This would involve a movement away from an approach to education
that is reactive, results-oriented, concerned with short-term, individualistic,
reform-driven social changes, and responsive to the needs of bourgeois
culture, toward an approach that is pro-active, process-oriented, concerned
with long-term individual and collective empowerment and transformation
of social structures, and is responsive to the needs of working people.
Critical theorists find that the well-documented, repressive, coercive,
and stratified nature of education is not preeminently, the result of an
unfortunate accident of history, or the inhuman dispositions of its practitioners.
Education, is a key element in the reproduction and legitimation of a stratified
society, and an important means of transmitting an ideology underpinning
a bureaucratic, consumerist capitalism. The work of Antonio Gramsci (1971)
and others has made clear that, at least in the west, the continuation
of unequal and exploitative societies rests less on the brute, coercive
apparatus of the state, than on the development of a shared consensus (hegemony)
of aspirations and beliefs. Within such a perspective education rather
than force plays a key role in maintaining an acceptance of the present
distribution of power, resources, and experiences. Education is an important,
if not the key component in the operation of social control in the US (Shapiro
1985). If, as I believe, an important part of the sociological endeavor
is about questioning hegemonic ideas and aiding students to understand
and redress the inherent inequalities in our political economic system,
sociologists must shift from doing pragmatic education about social justice
to doing popular education for social justice.
In order to move sociologists toward a critical understanding education
for social justice, we can start with a question: What lessons can academics
working in college classrooms learn from the theory and praxis of popular
education? In this essay I examine the reflections and experiences of a
group of practicing popular educators. First I briefly describe the nature
of popular education. I then present an ethnography of a Highlander Research
and Education Center workshop on Education for Social Change for Emerging
Popular Education Centers. The ethnography is followed by an analysis of
several of the main elements of popular education that allow educators
to deal with the third dimension of power — the control of ideas. I conclude
with some of my own thoughts on how popular education challenges educators
at colleges and universities.
Education for Social Change
Education for social change is based in the interests of oppressed groups.
The process involves people in critical analysis, so that they can, potentially,
act collectively to change oppressive structures through participatory,
creative, and empowering methods of educational practice (Arnold et al.
1991: 5). The term popular education, a translation of the Spanish educación
popular, defines this approach. Freirian popular educators, promote
"conscientization" as a key aim of this type of education. For radical
educator Paulo Freire (1973: 51) conscientization refers to a learning
process in which people, as knowing subjects, achieve a deepening awareness
of both the socio-cultural reality that shapes their lives and of their
capacity to transform that reality. In Southern and Eastern Africa the
terms "people's education" or "education for self-reliance" are in common
usage. In Asia activists speak of "education for mass mobilization" and
of engaging in "participatory research." In Europe we often hear of "cultural
animation" work, while in Canada and the United States "transformational
education" has influenced development education, feminist pedagogy, community-based
adult literacy programs, anti-racist education, and union education programs
(Arnold et al. 1991: 22).
Popular education begins with the lived experience of the learners. These
experiences, in their humanizing as well as oppressive dimensions, are
explored and validated through dialogue. The method then moves to collective
discussion about the possibilities of transforming the oppressive elements
of experience, culminates in collective social action, and thus begins
again. This dynamic of reflection and action, or "praxis," is central to
transformational education approaches (Arnold et al. 1991; Freire 1973;
Horton 1990; Shor 1992). Popular education is political in theory and in
practice and committed to the subordinated sectors of any society. It promotes
a dialogical interaction and mutual understanding between educators and
learners, questioning power relations in the larger community, as well
as in the individual classroom. Popular education breaks the vertical relationships
typical in traditional education by demanding high levels of participation
by the learners and the recognition of the role that their knowledge can
play in both the production of new knowledge, and in the construction of
a new society.
Highlander and the Institute on
Education for Social Change
The Highlander Research and Education Center is one example of a place
that has been doing the work of socializing popular educational practices
for over 60 years. Highlander is a residential adult education center advancing
participatory democracy with working class people through an educational
program based on popular education and participatory research. While working
with Highlander as both a participant and facilitator in a number of workshops
on education for social change, I have developed a host of questions about
what it means to facilitate learning for social change, rather than teaching
about social change. I have also learned something about the practice of
popular education which I have tried to apply in my work with communities
and in the college classroom.
Founded in 1932 in Monteagle, TN, by Myles Horton and Don West, and relocated
in New Market, TN in 1972, Highlander Research and Education Center has
always been dedicated to the belief that working-class people can learn
to take charge of their lives and circumstance. As aptly stated in the
title to Myles Horton's autobiography, Highlander has been in the struggle
for social justice and participatory democracy for The Long Haul (Horton
1990). The praxis at Highlander is guided by a concern for social justice
and an understanding of the need to reorient society from an autocratic,
authoritarian bias, to an egalitarian, participatory democracy. Horton
believed that the reason Highlander has been so successful is ". . . that
you have to trust the people, you have to love the people, and you have
to care for the people. You have to practice what you preach with people"
(Conti and Fellenez, 1986:15). As a central location in which marginal
groups carry on the struggle for a democratic society, and as a well-known
place of resistance, Highlander offers insights into many of the principles
of popular education.
While Highlander has served as an inspiration to many adult educators,
its primary activity has been to work directly with grassroots communities
for empowerment, rather than to systematically share its educational philosophy
and pedagogical methods. But in the early 1990's, partly as a way of responding
to the numerous requests of educators, activists, community leaders, and
organizers to learn from its approach, Highlander began to offer a week
long Institute for Education and Social Change. The Institute brings people
together who are active in many types of education programs. Participants
come from other residential education centers, unions, service organizations,
grassroots member organizations, non-governmental organizations, colleges,
universities, and other public and private educational facilities of all
types. The Institute for Education and Social Change is designed to facilitate
dialogue and action related to the practice of popular education and participatory
research methods. These workshops provide a free space in which to strategize,
exchange, and develop praxis-based educational strategies designed to upset
the traditional balance of power in capitalist society.
My research grows directly from the discourse of workshop participants
at the Institute for Education and Social Change for Popular Education
Centers held at Highlander on May 8-12, 1993. The report is based on my
own participant observation, participants' written comments and notes,
newsprint used to record major points, and audio-tapes of the workshop.3
The Institute for Education and Social Change addressed issues faced by
both established and emerging popular residential education centers. Workshop
participants hailed from twelve states and provinces in the US and Canada,
including groups affiliated with formal academic institutions attempting
to bridge the gap between the university and the community, organizations
already pursuing community education programs, and members of several fledgling
residential education centers. They were working on a wide range of issues,
including community economic development, community and university relations,
land rights, natural resources, problems in traditional education, homelessness,
leadership training, and community organizing.
Highlander staff structured the Institute around three key problematics
that emerged from the participants' written thoughts prior to the workshop:
(1) the principles and practices of popular education; (2) the role of
the popular educator; and (3) operating a residential education center.
This paper addresses only the first two subject areas to show how popular
education is a viable and necessary process for creating progressive social
change in a number of settings, including colleges and universities.
Reflections on the Workshop
The workshop unofficially started on Saturday evening with a gathering
at the Horton House, providing most of the participants in the workshop
a chance to get to know each other at an informal and friendly level.4
After lunch the following day we began our opening session in the Highlander
Center. We began in traditional Highlander fashion by going around the
circle and introducing ourselves and our reasons for attending the workshop.
Some thirty people came to the Institute seeking a variety of tools and
techniques to take back home to their communities where the real work of
grassroots social change takes place. Reasons were many: translating peoples'
needs to those in power; doing better political education; understanding
how to bring participatory techniques and ideas into university settings;
deepening understanding of the philosophy of popular education to better
integrate theory and practice; linking urban and rural peoples; and strategizing
on how to be more helpful to the needs of community.
Building the Foundation for Popular Education
After completing the circle we broke into small groups for some concrete
discussion with people from our own local communities. Workshop facilitators
asked each group to draw a visual representation of where they were at
that moment in terms of a popular education program, and what directions
they would like their organization to go. Each group shared their vision,
allowing us to more deeply understand the contextual and cultural environments
in which they worked.
After a break for supper and some time to relax we gathered again in our
circle to listen to a chataqua by Frank Adams on the history of popular
or folk education. Frank is an activist, writer, former director and longtime
friend of Highlander. He provided us with an overview of the development
of folk education throughout the twentieth century. Non-formal education
centers can arise for a variety of reasons both for and against social
justice. The centers referred to by Adams are those based in, for, and
on a participatory democratic platform in practice and in theory. In these
spaces peoples' experiences are transformed through an educational process
and praxis informed by critical theory, radical pedagogy, and participatory
research method.5
Here follows some of Adams' remarks.6
The Danes were among the first to formalize "safe place" education,
for the purpose of reviving culture old and new, to prevent the destruction
of "peoples" culture, and to resist oppression directly. The Danish concept
"First Enliven; Then Enlighten" best describes their educational practice.
The idea was to link education to movements for social change which sought
liberation and worked for life by doing art and song deriving its substance
from the people themselves. Danish peasants and farmers were among those
to develop education for social change in the early 1900's. Cooperative
movements in people's homes in England also grew during this time. The
worker's cooperative movements stemmed from folk schools where unlettered
people, using their own value system, conceptualized democratic institutions
with democratic control (e.g., most worker owned cooperatives were based
on one member / one vote; join, rejoin, quit, start back, it's OK; limited
interest on capital; profits divided on basis of services; major goal a
non-prejudiced society).
Around the same time cooperative movements abounded in China. In the Reivi
Valley surrounding Shanghai in the 1940's worker owned business's involved
450,000 people. These cooperative movements influenced Mao Tse Tung to
use folk schools in caves as an educational form and to design literacy
schools for the peasants on the long march. The Labor School Movement in
the United States in the early twentieth century provides another example
of this form of resistance against the hegemonic ideas of the dominant
class. In 1910, 385 labor schools existed across the US such as Brookwood
in New York, Commonwealth in Arkansas, and the Work People's College of
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Other exemplars of non-formal education include safe places like the Underground
Railroad where persons like Sojourner Truth resisted oppression by trying
to free slaves from bondage. The Centros in Spain are "places of
light," that are free spaces in the middle of the barrio that offer safety
from police repression. Centros became the central free social space
to spread information among those involved in the anarchist uprising. American
Indian Movement Survival Schools, Citizenship Schools, Bread and Roses,
and the Marrowbone Folk School provide other examples of attempted and
then repressed popular education centers. Folk schools still operating
today include Appalachian Folk Life Center, The Penn Center in South Carolina,
and Highlander Research and Education Center to name a few.
These centers of democratic and participatory education are important to
understand for it is these types of free spaces that are fundamentally
necessary for social movements to succeed. Through their theory and praxis
non-formal education centers attempt to help make the world a more just
place. Most importantly, these are the sites of resistance that allow grassroots
people and groups to break the iron cage of capitalist consciousness so
pervasive today. This is precisely why the powerful in control of the status
quo generally repress these places to an extreme degree (see the history
of Highlander for example Adams 1975; Bledsoe 1969; and Glenn 1988).
An organizer from Chicago summed up the importance of the chataqua when
he stated,
Frank has shown us why we must know history because the things we dare
call repression today are nothing compared to those faced by our brothers
and sisters in the past. As the poster on the wall over there says, 'let
the dead walk before you.' It speaks to remembering those who have given
their lives so we can sit here today and talk this talk. So when you think
like that it helps us to remember the strength of these people (Martin
Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Mother Jones) and that we travel on their shoulders.
We are taught that the foundation is the answer so we stand on their shoulders
and their great accomplishments. The repression we encounter cannot be
like that they experienced because they have already shown to the oppressor
once the spirit is united we can move wherever we are willing to go. That's
how I feel.
These comments led us to speak for some time on the general nature of safe
places. A political educator from New Mexico pointed out that "safe doesn't
necessarily mean physically safe; it's a different type of safe, of somehow
getting the strength to do what you need to do in spite of the fact that
it might not be safe. Places aren't always physically safe but they are
safe because they are the right places to be." Another participant offered
that for her, "safety is not an option right now . . . we may move toward
safety, which to me is creating a space that actually accommodates all
of us with integrity and authenticity. I think this really packs a challenge."
Physical and psychic safety are not guaranteed. They are to be worked toward
whether in a college classroom, in a residential adult education center,
or in a living room. The goal as a popular educator is to create as safe
a space as possible while grappling with the intense issue of oppression
in its many forms: race, class, gender, age, physical disability, etc.
Questions and comments which emerged from the evening's discussion had
to do with understanding in a practical way what happens when spaces are
created that bring together those from different backgrounds. "How do we
create a space to learn where we can cross that mentality; a place where
that struggle can happen? What sorts of things can we as educators do to
facilitate free, safe, and effective interactions among persons of common
or uncommon backgrounds to allow for experientially based, critical learning?"
These would seem key questions for educators in any formal or non-formal
learning environment. According to the group of community organizers from
Chicago, what popular educators need to understand is that, ". . . we have
no enemies; what we have are brothers and sisters who don't understand
. . . yet!"
The night's discussion concluded with some debate on whether or not a popular
educator needs a physical place to do critical and emancipatory education.
Those who felt that defined space for popular education is a necessity
are best summed up by a community organizer from Massachusetts who believes,
It is really important to have a physical space to do critical education.
We can't guarantee that all the thinking there will be good, but we do
have some guidelines for what is acceptable and I think that is important
also. For my money the safe space is just something that goes along with
it, you see a building with a sign that says "Peace and Justice Center"
and it draws some people to it. They seem to gravitate to it and it seems
important to me to have that symbol there. We don't have it in neon yet,
but maybe someday!
Others believed that physical space wasn't the necessity, rather the important
elements are the attitudes and interactions created by the learners and
the popular educators wherever the learning takes place. Frank Adams summed
up this perspective when he adjourned the session by saying,
There is no defined place for this type of education—it is wherever
you are where you can be free, whether it is South Carolina Sea Islanders
on busses going to work, or coal miners organizing a union in graveyards
in the dark of night. What is learned is put into action and it is our
job as critical educators to facilitate this process in whatever environment
we work.
Some Principles of Popular Education
The following morning we began a workshop session based on the values and
methods that underlie popular education. The evening before, workshop participants
had challenged the Highlander staff to name the principles which guide
their work. In response to the challenge we began the Monday morning session
by watching and listening to excerpts from a videotape Adventures of
A Radical Hillbilly, in which Bill Moyers interviewed Myles Horton.
After viewing the tape, workshop participants named the principles of Highlander's
educational approach that we heard during the interview:
-
you don't teach people; you help them to learn;
-
the program is based on life experiences—help people to analyze what
they already know—"you only learn from what you learn from";
-
the staff need to learn from their own experiences to make analogies,
draw parallels, and examine how our experiences relate to the problem;
-
you deal with 20-30 persons at a time, working with leaders who will
multiply, using periods of interest, go with what people are interested
in;
-
the greatest learning comes from the struggle for justice;
-
your sights keep changing, your vision is constantly expanding, "if
you don't struggle against
oppression, it moves in on you."7
After naming the principles that guide the work at Highlander, an educator
from a folk school in Maine raised an important question. "What about the
responsibility of intervening educationally? Is it possible to rely only
on people's experiences, or at times must we broaden them in order to do
the type of educating we are talking about?" After some debate on the merits
of experientially based learning, a long-time Highlander staffer responded,
"Highlander does go beyond experiential learning. We intervene and at times
do not admit that we are really pushing people. It is one of the least
spoken aspects of the approach." A member of the Hawaiian delegation of
political and cultural educators believed that admitting to pushing is
extremely honest. To illustrate this point she told us a story about a
mother and her baby.
Even though we sometimes may have to push, educators must still begin
where people are in their experiences, not in the abstract. Each day starting
in the spring the mother would take her baby for walk. At one point in
the walk they would stop to look at horses in a field. The baby would laugh,
talk and coo at the horses in delight, which pleased the mother very much.
After a few weeks the baby's mother could not figure out why baby did not
react to the horses, when indeed he used to always, and this saddened her
greatly. Finally, after a few days of this the mother knelt down next to
the baby and realized that all the baby in the stroller could see was the
grass that had grown taller from the spring rains, not the horses. Once
the mother picked him up the baby was again delighted and enthused by the
horses in the field. The moral of the story is that you must make sure
to begin where the people are, with what they say. You may push later,
but where you start is an important aspect of popular education.
After this discussion we broke into five small groups to list the methods
and principles which guided our work as popular educators, and the difficulties
of putting these principles into practice. After the breakout session we
returned to the large group to report back and discuss the issues that
we raised.
A critical part of the discourse on principles and practices first involved
a discussion of the learning process. Participants determined that "all
steps in the learning process are to be affirmed, even the first small
steps." "Whether one is working with young or old, all need to experience
things for themselves and be allowed to learn and grow by discussing experiences."
The experiential basis of popular education can not be underestimated.
According to the director of a South Carolina folk school, "Not every step
in the learning process is a forward one. Many times we reach the wrong
conclusion. Some decisions, assessments and actions will be exactly what
are necessary for the situation and others will be completely off the mark.
The important thing to remember is that all these experiences can and should
encompass critical learning."
One of the Highlander staff then shared a story about a community doing
economic development work to illustrate the process of experiential learning.
A group of people in a small rural community felt that they needed
to do something to develop new ways of making a living in the area, or
the community itself was in danger of failing. Community members knew what
they needed to do, but were unsure what tactics and strategies would help
the community to remain viable. The first solution was that industries
must be recruited to locate in the area. The first tactic to emerge was
that the community needed to clean and spruce itself up, then companies
will certainly want to come here. An intensive cleanup effort was mounted
(trash removed, rubbish burned, vacant areas fixed up, etc.), yet no companies
decided to locate in the community. The next tactic was to start their
own industry based on resources within the community itself. But major
obstacles to this strategy included a lack of land and capital, as well
as the wrath of local companies already in existence who make their livings
in conjunction with the absentee land owners and their managers. At this
point the people began to move from blaming themselves for their problems
(e.g., we must clean up our community) to dealing with the underlying power
issues that were hindering local development: absentee land-owners controlling
over 75 % of the county; several local coal and timber operators controlling
nearly all of the rest. It was only after these initial attempts at local
development were tried and failed that the opportunity for the critical
analysis of structures became possible within this particular community.
As illustrated by this example, a key for doing experiential education
is that learning must take place in conjunction with collective action.
Even though some missteps may be taken in the long-term struggle for justice,
opportunities for critical learning take place at each step in the process.
In fact, as each step unfolded in the example above, it afforded individuals
an increasingly deepened critical perspective on how the world works. Thus,
as a popular educator from a South Carolina folk school put it, "sometimes
the learning process must take place even though you, the educator, don't
agree with it." But throughout all of it, an effective popular educator
will attempt to make connections and build relationships for future learning,
empowerment, and action.8
After our discussion of the learning process each small group proceeded
to identify the main features of popular education based on their experiences.
The overriding principle of popular or participatory education for one
group involved creating educational praxis in terms of people over institutions.
Educators "cannot become a slave to bureaucracy--even when you're in the
bureaucracy." As a teacher, one "needs to always see people as self-conscious
political actors," and to "believe in the self determination of the people
you work with." The work done by a popular educator "must be rooted in
a commitment to both peace and justice" and "identify the links between
the expressed needs of the people in the community and the resources and
power-base of the status quo." The basis of popular education is to work
with individuals as individuals. This practice radically alters the traditional
model of education where one teaches toward the median. The underlying
commitments to the self-determination of individuals and to a just and
peaceful society separate popular education from traditional educational
forms which aid and abet the dominant class in maintaining unequal power
relations in society.
The basis of effective popular education for the second and third groups
is connected to social action. Popular education is "education through
doing social action and based always on the experiences of the learner."
Education is conducted through translation, not interpretation. "Popular
educators must be translators of critical consciousness, not interpreters
of it; translators in the way that we share all the information at our
disposal around a particular problem and let the people themselves sift
through it to find and establish what may be useful in solving the problem.
It is not up to us as educators to interpret the problem or the solution
for the community. It is our job to facilitate a critical learning process.
If we only pass on our own interpretations an important step in the conscientization
process is lost." People must be allowed to interpret their experiences,
data, or information for themselves. For, according to another of the Massachusetts
educators, "It is when analyzing these collective interpretations through
critical analysis that popular educators must seek to establish the right
questions for any given period in history. This is what a popular educator
must bring to the table."
The focus of the fourth and fifth groups emphasized similar themes, finding
that "Popular education is based on the idea that it must move with the
times and in order to be effective must be committed to and directly intertwined
with dynamic, on-going, progressive social action." They also believed
that the popular educational process is one "that takes place over time
and that it is based on constant learning by all participants in the process,
at their own level of development" Popular education must be based on an
approach that "aims for simplicity while not losing the complexity of the
political and economic dimensions of any problem area." A large facet of
popular education is to reconceptualize issues of power. Group five identified
a major feature of the approach as "a perspective which turns upside down
traditional notions of power" finding that the key to popular education
is to, "make the shift from seeing oppression to seeing resistance to oppression."
Overall, five significant principles emerge from the discourse on the principles
and practice of popular education: (1) popular education is committed to
the self-determination and emancipation of subordinated groups within society;
(2) people are to be seen as self-conscious political actors capable of
changing themselves and the social structure; (3) loyalties are developed
and maintained in terms of people, not institutions; (4) the endeavor of
popular education is to learn to critically analyze individual and collective
experiences in conjunction with participatory social action and to build
on and transform these analyzed experiences in a critical way towards progressive
social change; and (5) popular education is about facilitating learning
through practice based on peer teaching in which all persons involved learn
with and from each other.
The Politics of Popular Education
The Monday afternoon circle began with several participants sharing their
experiences of the people they worked with (their constituencies), how
they worked, and why. After these presentations the workshop participants
attended one of three discussions pertaining to the role of the educator:
working across cultures; choosing issues and beginning points for critical
education; and the general role of the popular educator. For the purpose
of this article I only present information developed from the discourse
in the general role of the educator and the choosing issues groups. The
small group that dealt with strategies for working across cultures had
a unique and powerful experience based on especially personal stories.
A focal point of the discourse around the general role of the educator
was the distinction, or the lack of it, between organizing and educating.
The discussion surrounded the differences and similarities between the
organizer's and educator's approaches to social change. Participants saw
community organizing models as "issue driven, reactive, results oriented,
and concerned with short-term goals," while viewing popular education as
"process driven, pro-active, seeking transformation, and interested in
long-term changes." In fact, one of the Highlander staff noted that, "Maybe
it's more than organizers or educators. I self-identify as a campaigner,
but whatever one chooses to name it the point is — there are many good
organizers and bad organizers and many good educators and bad educators.
The task is really to define what good organizers and educators do since
popular education makes both roles part and parcel of the same mission."
While discussing the process of creating learning situations based on the
goals of empowerment and liberation participants in the small group identified
several keys to the popular educators role. "Throughout learning activities
rules and norms about process must be identified and agreed to early on."
Conflict situations may arise but establishing the ground rules can avoid
many of them. Identifying and following the ground rules is not only the
purview of the educator, since "we need to allow all members of our group
to be gatekeepers as to whether or not process is happening." Most important,
and one of the most difficult things for teachers, is to "let go of power
and promote other leaders." An educator isn't the one who always has an
answer, much less the right answer. While it may be an overstatement to
say, "a good popular educator will resist the temptation to say something
really insightful," a popular educator should concentrate on striving to
"learn from and with the community to make connections that lead to action."
In other words, educators can no longer view themselves as experts. "Educators
must not just teach at people, they must help them to learn." If the goal
of education is to foster a wide ranging democratically based leadership,
". . . educators need to work with the community as the source of information
and experience." In fact, "the goal of any organizer or educator should
be to work themselves out of a job, not become the entrenched person at
the top of the leadership hierarchy." Critical educators need to see people
as, "self conscious political actors" and to "believe in the self-determination
of the people with whom you are working." We must begin to "let people
make their own interpretations of events or problems based on their own
experiences." The major role of the educator then becomes to "validate
people's experiences," and help them to reflect critically upon these experiences,
"to ask the right questions." Education for democratic social change can
only truly take place by creating a framework that encompasses popular
knowledge, critical consciousness, and an analysis of lived experiences,
all coupled with progressive social action.
A concrete matter troubling a number of participants revolved around which
issues to work with and how to choose those issues. A member of the Hawaiian
contingency stated that part of her way of operating within the community
was to emphasize reciprocity, "The goal must be to find equalizers within
community dialogues, between extremes in wealth and poverty and between
the intellect and heart. Reciprocity is what needs to be articulated as
a value." Another member of the Hawaiian delegation found that the early
steps in choosing issues require that "educators become cultural community
translators. By this I mean to listen closely to the people with the grievance.
In other words the issues and problems must be of direct concern to the
people you work with. A group struggling to preserve their way of life,
such as the indigenous population in Hawaii battling the land and resort
developers, can't be expected to be interested in issues related to the
pro-choice movement." Educators in all environments must also strive to
be in-tune with the learners in our classrooms and listen closely to the
problems people really have, not the problems we think they should have.
Participants found that another step when attempting to define issues and
questions is to re-name and re-define the assets of the community in terms
identified within the community itself. "To change the nature of
the questions we raise, we must change the focus on the binoculars."
"Community educators should not pose the questions, they must help
the constituency struggle to come up with their own questions and then
answers, then back to questions and on and on." Key factors when choosing
issues include "becoming aware of key issues and decision-making process
in the community in which you operate"; "paying attention to the decision-making
processes that impact on the group"; "gathering information, although one
can only decide what information to gather after having begun to 'pay attention'
to how decisions are made"; "monitoring of the decision making process";
and "taking actions such as lobbying, advocacy, organizing, and voting."
Choosing issues that are authentic to the community and developing methods
to grapple with them, requires an emphasis on popular participation and
on popular ownership of the information created in the process.
The popular educator needs to embrace radically different relations with
learners, and must "understand the dynamic of the ownership of the information
that is shared." Social scientists and educators must be involved in the
creation of popular knowledge in which the owners of the information are
the people themselves. "Before we can accomplish our goal of a more democratic
society people must reclaim what they already know." In such work, "research
becomes a process of developing peoples knowledge and simultaneously of
organizing and awareness building." It is at once necessary to be "honest
and accountable with your own self, others, and the agenda." All parties
involved in gathering data are "part of the process and share equally in
the production of the knowledge that takes place at whatever level the
critical consciousness of the individual." Academics can neither play nor
fulfill the role of the traditional expert. Rather, they must operate as
facilitators. Scientists and educators can no longer be the owners of expert,
cultural, informational knowledge, nor may they lay claim as the sole owners
of the material gathered while doing primary research. Scientists must
understand the complexities of the information dynamic from the perspective
of oppressed groups. An alternative research model envisions a participatory
experience in which both communities and academics benefit from the research.
This participatory research model involves the community in defining the
issues that need to be addressed from the conceptualization of the action
research project, includes them as democratic partners throughout all facets
of the research process, and offers the community control of the information
that is generated.
The report back to the large group on the discussion of the role of a good
popular educator provided a summary of a number of key attributes: having
respect for people; knowing when and how to validate peoples experience(s);
being properly prepared to provide an effective learning experience and
environment, and doing your best to have the right questions; maintaining
clear vision while helping to heal others; being responsible and flexible
to persons and situations; understanding the privileges one holds as a
convenor; and being extremely process conscious. In a practical sense the
role of the popular educator can be seen as one driven by the "need to
think through problems with all learners to the point that you can begin
to understand, address, and begin to undo what's wrong." This role cannot
be taught, it must be learned by doing, and continually informed by actions
and reflection on the part of the popular educator.
After dinner and a short break we came together on Monday evening for some
cultural sharing and a discussion of the importance of integrating culture
in popular education. Throughout Highlander's history, people's songs,
stories, and other cultural forms have played an integral role in the educational
format and process for students attending workshops. The evening proved
to be an intensely personal one as people shared individual and family
stories related to their names. From the events of the evening and the
discussion generated the following day, the interconnection between authentic
people's culture and education for social change proved a powerful one.
Tuesday was spent dealing with concrete issues of importance to those thinking
about or actually operating a residential education center. The workshops
dealt with issues of staffing, administering, managing, and funding residential
education programs, networking with other groups and organizations, workshop
planning and curriculum, participatory research, field work, and more.
We attended a square dance on Tuesday evening and finished the Institute
on Wednesday morning, when we wrapped-up our last session by using the
drawings we made in the opening circle to answer the questions: "Where
do we go from here?" and "What are your plans when you get back home?"
One of my plans as I returned home was to share in some broader fashion
what we learned at the workshop. Toward that end, over the last few years,
I have grappled with these ideas and issues throughout my graduate coursework
related to adult education, political sociology, and participatory research.
Based on my work I will now attempt to address in a more theoretical way
the nature of the discourse of the workshop participants at the Institute
for Education and Social Change for Emerging Popular Residential Education
Centers.
Theoretical Discussion
For educators in colleges and universities who are interested in creating
transformational social change rather than supporting the status quo, popular
education provides some valuable insights into the relationship between
power and education. The importance of the lessons learned in the workshop
for social scientists in academic settings is grounded in the inter-connections
among free spaces, resistance, and the control and production of knowledge.
A topic we returned to a number of times throughout the workshop is that
of the role of power in education. How is it conceptualized? How do we
alter the power imbalances that exist in society, in our communities, and
in our classrooms? Whoever has power over the control and production of
knowledge shapes consciousness about class, race, gender, etc. The problem
of the working class when they have little or no control over what knowledge
is produced, for whom, or why, is that this powerlessness erodes its ability
to create consciousness. Educators who are making free spaces for critical
thinking and trying to redefine power relations with and among learners
only begins the process of deepening individuals' critical consciousness
of the power imbalances inherent in the classroom, in our institutions,
and in society as a whole. Popular education only happens when learners
are connected to social action aimed at creating democratic and progressive
changes in the institutional structure of society. Popular education is
participation in collective action, built from the ground-up, through the
production of people's knowledge, using participatory approaches to education,
in order to question and alter traditional relations of power. The connection
between popular education and social action challenges the unequal power
distribution in our present society.
In order to do popular education it is necessary for educators to create
spaces where democratic relations and open dialogue are fostered and maintained.
Sarah Evans and Harry Boyte (1986: 18) find that "particular sorts
of public places in the community, free spaces, are the environments in
which people are able to learn a new self-respect, a deeper and more assertive
group identity, public skills, and values of cooperation and civic virtue."
Put simply, free spaces are settings between private lives and large-scale
institutions where ordinary citizens can act with dignity, independence,
and vision. A college classroom is certainly connected to a larger institution,
but it can and does provide an excellent setting where a popular educator
can create free space. Democratic action in society is dependent on these
types of free spaces, where people can experience schooling in citizenship
and learn a vision of the common good in the course of struggling for change.
Powerless groups are, by definition, marginal actors within the political
economic system. The fact that the powerless are considered marginal by
the powerful in society has created opportunities for "free spaces" to
prosper where the "hidden transcript" of resistance may grow. James C.
Scott (1990), defines the term "public transcript" as a shorthand way of
describing the open interaction between subordinates and those who dominate;
the term "hidden transcript" is used to define the discourse which takes
place "offstage" beyond direct observation by power holders. Inasmuch as
the major historical forms of domination have presented themselves in the
form of a metaphysics, a religion, or a worldview, they have provoked the
development of more or less equally elaborate replies in the hidden transcript
(Scott 1990:115).
The elaboration of hidden transcripts depends not only on the creation
of relatively unmonitored physical locations and free time but also a counter
ideology—a negation—that effectively provides a framework for a host of
resistant practices invented in self-defense by any subordinate group (Scott
1990: 118). The form counter ideologies take depends on the active human
agents who create and disseminate them. In terms of education, the social
scientist's public transcript can be seen in publications like Teaching
Sociology. The hidden transcript is that of the practitioners of critical
and emancipatory education for social change based on participatory and
democratic principles in grassroots educational settings like the Highlander
Research and Education Center. The hidden transcript of popular education
offers access to an understanding of power in the form of resistant educational
practice.
In his concept the "third dimension of power," Steven Lukes argues that
we must allow for, ". . . consideration of the many ways in which potential
issues are kept out of politics whether through the operation of social
forces and institutional practices or through individuals' decisions" (1974:
24; italics added). Lukes postulates that, "the most effective and insidious
use of power is to prevent conflict from arising in the first place" (1974:
23). In other words a key attribute of power is to shape consciousness
through control of education, communication, socialization, and culture.
As we begin to understand this third dimension of power, we can also begin
to more effectively develop strategies to build social movements and empower
individuals and collectives. The third dimension of power suggests that
educational theorists and practitioners must enter the murky waters of
socialization, media, culture, knowledge and information control, and the
shaping of beliefs and ideologies, in order to understand the role of power
and education for social change. At the core of such a political education
is an alternative reading of the style, rituals, language, systems of meaning,
and relations to power that inform the cultural terrains of subordinate
groups. . . it is about organizing against the third dimension of power.
A dialogical perspective of power and education for social change is offered
by Brazilian popular educator, Paulo Freire (1971, 1973, 1985). Power is
viewed as both a negative and positive force, its character dialectical,
and its mode of operation always more than simply repressive. For Freire
power is seen to work on and through people. Domination is never so complete
that power is experienced exclusively as a negative force, yet power is
at the basis of all forms of behavior in which people resist, struggle,
and fight for a better world. In a general sense, Freire's theory of power
and his demonstration of its dialectical character serve the important
function of broadening the spheres and terrains on which power operates.
Power, in this instance, is not exhausted in those public and private spheres
by governments, ruling classes, and other dominant groups. It is more ubiquitous
and is expressed in a range of oppositional public spaces and spheres that
traditionally have been characterized by the absence of power and thus
any form of resistance. Freire's view of power suggests not only an alternative
perspective to those radical theorists trapped in the straitjacket of despair
and cynicism, it also stresses that there are always cracks, tensions,
and contradictions in various social spheres where power can be exercised
as a positive force in the name of resistance (Giroux 1988: 114-115).
All of this suggests taking seriously the cultural capital of oppressed
peoples. By developing critical and analytical tools to examine culture,
and by keeping in touch with dominant definitions of knowledge, popular
educators can analyze all forms of cultural capital for their usefulness
and for the ways in which they bear on the logic of domination. The issue
here is that radical educators recognize that the cultural capital of the
subaltern provides diverse and critical insights into the nature of domination
and the possibilities for social and self emancipation. The relationship
needed between grassroots academics and their community collaborators is
a mutual respect forged in the criticism and the need to struggle against
all forms of domination.
In the struggle to create a praxis-driven education aimed at creating resistance
to domination, critical theory and human agency are the basic categories
used to analyze educational experiences. A pedagogy based on understanding
oppression in terms of resistance, rather than control, offers new possibilities
for creating critical and emancipatory educational experiences for learners
in our class rooms. As Willis (1977) contends, theories of resistance point
to new ways of constructing a radical pedagogy by developing analyses of
the ways in which class and culture combine to offer the outlines for a
cultural politics. Although studies of resistance point to those social
sites and spaces in which dominant culture is encountered and challenged
by subordinate groups, they generally do not adequately conceptualize the
historical development of the conditions that promote and reinforce contradictory
modes of resistance and struggle. The issue here is that there have been
too few attempts by social theorists to understand how subordinate groups
embody and express a combination of reactionary and progressive behaviors—behaviors
that embody ideologies both underlying the structure of social domination
and containing the logic necessary to overcome it (Aronowitz and Giroux,
1985: 100).
If culture and the construction of consciousness are important to resistance,
as Evans and Boyte (1986), Lukes (1974), Scott (1990), and Willis (1977),
suggest, how then does this translate to the political work of using education
as a tool for empowerment? A first step is to understand the process by
which resistance is developed and codified. This involves investigations
into the underlying principles of popular education and how practitioners
of popular education carry out their work. It is only after examining the
actual theory and practice of popular education that we can begin to move
from an analysis of individual resistors to the socialization of resistant
educational practices.
Popular Education and the University
It is a difficult task for any individual to begin to unlearn the dominant
social paradigm and to see the new possibilities and doors critical thinking
and educating can open. We are all informed to some degree or another by
the hegemonic ideologies of the day (e.g., capitalism over all other economic
forms, free market ideology over planned markets, representative democracy
over all other democratic forms, individualism over collectivism). In order
to create and foster critical consciousness in academic classes educators
need to facilitate critical learning rather than demand rote memorization.
Educators have to redefine their role and seek participation by all, value
each individual's experience, and become the persons who ask good questions,
not the ones with the answers. Popular educators teaching for social justice
in college classes need to be willing to experiment with the learning process
and explore new and old educational forms. Educators must also realize
that they are political actors in their own right and have biases about
the way education is done. Only when values are made clear can educators
begin to work toward a more just society.
Popular education requires a conceptual and practical shift from envisioning
only oppression to seeing resistance to oppression. The subaltern must
have voice. Most academic research and energies are guided in support of
the status quo (e.g., tenure, promotion, grant moneys). If we as educators
and researchers want to foster active participants in the political and
cultural events of the day, we need to offer opportunities to practice
and experience participatory principles in our class rooms wherever they
may be. Popular education is not only suited for use in community-based
educational settings; it can and should be used at all levels and in all
facets of the places and spaces that make up the fabric of our educational
system.
Popular education has generally been practiced in communities, where there
is a constituency that has already determined that they have a problem
in their own family, community, state, or society, and that they need to
do something about it. Sociology classes are typically attended by students
who are there because university or program requirements demand their attendance;
they are not there to change the world, but to get a degree and a white-collar
job, which helps to support the existing political economic system and
maintain the unequal power relations in society. Some academics teach in
environments in which their students are primarily white, from affluent
and privileged backgrounds, empowered by the system, and who feel downright
entitled to succeed, even at the expense of others for whom they may have
little empathy, understanding, or regard. Popular education principles,
whereby topics are chosen democratically, educators pose questions and
listen carefully, students share experiences and ideas, and together educators
and students analyze and reflect critically on what they have said, can
still be used to enhance critical learning in the college classroom.
It is my understanding that the basis of popular education is to use individual
and collective experience as a base from which to critically analyze the
humanizing and dehumanizing aspects of those experiences. Although the
group of people an educator works with may be comprised of the "privileged
class," experiences can nevertheless still provide a basis for critical
analysis. The popular educator would see profit in the critical engagement
of that elite experience, for the experiences of students are not false:
they are real and need to be understood that way. In a traditional class
teachers generally begin by defining the subject matter and the proper
feelings to have about the material rather than by asking students to define
their sense of the subject and feelings about it, and building from there.
The point is that the students' voices and words are the main points from
which a participatory class begins its critical investigation into the
workings of our present social system. While a classroom based in the principles
of popular education cannot transform an institution or society by itself,
it can offer students critical education of high quality and experiences
of democratic learning. Participation and effective growth are not brought
about by lecturing students on the values of participation and democracy;
rather, the class itself is structured so that students reflect critically
on meaningful questions and influence the direction of the syllabus.
I have no absolute solution as to how to create democracy and participation
in the college classroom. What I do know is that in order to move education
in a democratic and empowering direction a different form of interaction
between both educators and learners and between learners and learners is
necessary. Practitioners of popular education seek to produce a pedagogy
based on participatory and democratic relations of power in which "non-authoritarian
social relationships that support dialogue and communication become indispensable
for questioning the meaning and nature of knowledge, and peeling away the
hidden structures of reality" (Giroux, 1981: 133). Free spaces are created
in social environments where persons can learn to think about and critically
analyze the world around them. The popular classroom offers a chance to
hear the largely silent voices of students. I agree with Ira Shor that
"[t]he empowering classroom can open [students'] voices for expression
rarely heard before. Their voices are an untapped and unexpected universe
of words rich in thought and feeling. From it, students and teachers can
create knowledge that leaves behind the old disabling education in search
for new ways of being and knowing" (1992: 54). By embracing and promoting
popular education in the academic classroom sociologists can, in a small
way, stop reproducing existing power relations within society.
As a sociologist and educator I am concerned with the intersection between
the sociological theories of education and the actual practices of educators.
A central concern of this report has been to identify the underlying principles
of popular education that allow us to deal with the third dimension or
the structural aspects of power. Popular education, resistance, and theories
or power suggest that sociologists interested in doing education for social
change must develop a deeper sociological imagination and appreciation
regarding critical approaches to education. This means that academics must
look beyond traditional schools and institutions to alternative sites of
resistance where democratic education is actually practiced. It requires
more investigations into the social spheres that make up the few free spaces
that offer oppressed people the autonomy to develop and practice resistant
forms of knowledge production.
How sociologists as public intellectuals practice education in their own
classrooms and how their scientific research defines education help to
shape and frame the wider debate on the nature of education for our students
and for society at large. Popular education centers based on participatory
education principles offer academics an alternative educational perspective
founded on participatory principles upon which to base our theory and praxis
in the classroom and to inform the public debate about what education should
be about. In order to move the debate on the role of education and societal
development toward the goal of social justice for all, sociologists cannot
be neutral. Education for social justice must be informed by practice dedicated
to the collective empowerment of learners and grounded in resistance to
the day-to-day operation of the political and economic system in which
we live here and now. Sociologists can deepen their understanding of how
popular education is practiced in free spaces where the hidden transcript
of resistance is growing. We then need to work to introduce the praxis
of popular education into academic classrooms. It is only then that sociologists
will be able to shift from simply teaching about social justice to doing
education for social justice.
Endnotes
1. I would like to thank the workshop participants at the 1993 Institute
for Education and Social Change and the staff at Highlander for their assistance
and cooperation in making this project possible. This paper was originally
presented at the 1995 Southern Sociological Meetings in Atlanta, GA under
the title "First Enliven, Then Enlighten: Popular Education, Free Spaces,
and the Pursuit of Social Justice." I would like to thank Drs. Randy Stoecker,
Sam Marullo, and David Tandy for their critical reading and insightful
comments and suggestions which helped to improve this subsequent version
of my paper.
2. I owe a special thanks to John Gaventa, Professor of Sociology, at the
University of Tennessee, for challenging my perceptions of what education
and learning can be all about, for creating the free space that
made possible my intimate association with the Highlander Research and
Education Center, and for the close reading and comments on this paper
which helped to solidify my thinking on the relationship between popular
education and the university.
3. A note on usage. Throughout the ethnographic sections of the paper I
try to utilize as much as I can material which is taken directly from the
workshop itself. Where possible I have tried to attribute the quotes to
the speaker. Where this is not possible I simply enclose these ideas and
comments in quotes. Unattributed quotes are taken from sources (group presentations,
newsprint, and audio-tapes), where individual voice is indeterminable.
4. The Horton House is the former residence of the founder and long-time
director of Highlander, Myles Horton. The house is located on the 100 acre
Highlander campus at the top of Bays Mountain and provides a panoramic
view of the surrounding Smoky Mountains.
5. For more detailed information on critical theory see Evans and Boyte
1986; Giroux 1983; Gramsci 1971; Lather 1986; Weiler 1988; on radical pedagogy
see Freire 1970, 1973, 1978, 1985; Horton 1972, 1990; Horton and Freire
1990; and on participatory research methods see Fals-Borda and Rahman 1991;
Gaventa 1991; Maguire 1987; Park et al. 1993.
6. I would like to express my appreciation to Frank Adams for allowing
me to present these ideas. I share a large piece of the Adams' chataqua
to offer historical context to this type of popular education and to provide
the context for the discourse on popular education which emerged throughout
the workshop. As a participant and observer of the process, I believe that
the substance and nature of this presentation shaped the direction of the
Institute. These ideas are explored more fully in a forthcoming publication
by Mr. Adams.
7. For more detailed information on Highlander's philosophy and approach
to education see Highlander Research and Education Center (1989); Adams
(1975); Horton (1990); and the videotape, Adventures of a Radical Hillbilly.
(1981). These items are available through Highlander Research
and Education Center, 1959 Highlander Way, New Market, TN 37820.
8. Paulo Freire (1973) developed a three-step model for understanding development
leading to critical consciousness. The three levels, intransitive, semi-transitive,
and critical transitive, are thought sometimes to exist in a pure state
but can overlap. Intransitive consciousness denies the power of human beings
to change their lives or society. The intransitive person thinks that what
happens in life and society is controlled by inscrutable or divine forces,
by an all powerful elite, or by dumb luck and accidents. The intransitive
persons accepts or even celebrates the status quo. A person with semi-transitive
consciousness believes in cause and effect and in the human power to learn
and to change things. The semi-transitive individual does not connect the
pieces of reality into meaningful wholes but rather acts on parts in a
disconnected way. This unintegrated view of the world does not perceive
how separate parts of society condition each other or how a whole social
system is implicated in producing single effects in any one part. Semi-transitive
thought is partially empowered because it accepts human agency in the making
of personal and social change. This type of thinking is reformist insofar
as it leads to partial or contradictory changes. The final stage, critical
consciousness, is what allows people to make broad connections between
individual experience and social issues, between single problems and the
larger social system. The critically conscious individual connects personal
and social domains when studying or acting on any problem or subject matter.
For an excellent overview of this model see Ira Shor (1992: 112-135).
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