[Translation : EPALE France]

Article from education-populaire.fr

On the education-populaire.fr website, popular education is defined as follows:

“POPULAR EDUCATION: EMANCIPATING OURSELVES AND TRANSFORMING SOCIAL RELATIONS"

"No one educates anybody else. No one educates himself. People educate each other through their interactions of the world."

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Popular", because we refuse to delegate our power and responsibility

Welcome. You will see that on this website, we consider popular education to be a collective practice of emancipation and social transformation, by which the dominated must organise themselves to regain power over our situations, with the aim of transforming them.

Popular education is not about "educating the people". It is not a set of tools, nor a teaching method. It is an approach that aims to rebuild our collective capacity to analyse our situations and take action, to combat domination and transform society. The transformation of social relations cannot be delegated, it can only be popular, led by those who suffer exploitation, domination and oppression.

We take our realities as the starting point, analyse them and draw on scholarly knowledge to understand them better, all with the aim of returning to said realities to act, fight, create and transform. We must regain control over our realities and ability to act: organise ourselves collectively, rather than delegating the responsibility of leading the way or managing society to a small circle on our behalf.

Popular education facilitators use certain approaches to help groups work together on subjects, to analyse and develop them collectively. Their aim is to support collective reflection that takes reality as the starting point (lived experience) and returns to said reality (taking action); their main tool is their position."

The site presents a radical vision of how a process of social transformation can be collectively constructed.

POPULAR EDUCATION AND FEMINISM

The site features articles and reflections on feminism and popular education. Nowadays, it is clear that feminism impacts all sectors of society, in all its forms and struggles. Everyone has seen what is happening today in the world of cinema and entertainment, but also across the whole range of social practices: work, school, the military, and everywhere.

The document on the website dates back to 2017, but makes reference to "timeless" sources, to which should be added everything that has been written and experienced since then. 

https://www.education-populaire.fr/education-populaire-feminisme/

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS AND IDEAS OR ACTIONS IN FRANCE AND EUROPE

Popular education is also impacted. The aim of this first blog is to open up a debate on this theme. Along with Yaël Benayoun, Anne-Charlotte Oriol and other EPALE experts, we believe that it is essential to reflect on this issue if we are to better understand the challenges ahead, be they environmental, digital, social or educational. 

It is also a call for contributions to nourish our ability to move forward collectively, as the editors of education-populaire.fr put it. 

David LOPEZ, expert EPALE France.