In some reading that I’ve been doing on the integration of social services and community organizing, I’ve come across several references to popular education and its utility as a consciousness-raising strategy that can help people to think critically about the challenges they face and their structural causes, as well as to build relationships with others. That started me thinking about how seldom I’ve found social workers relying on similar methods, or, at least, being intentional about popular education as a part of their liberation work with clients.
I have participated in many popular education workshops as as participant, related to the global economy, women’s political power, labor organizing, and immigrant rights. I’ve also facilitated some popular education work, primarily for immigrant youth and adults, related to workers’ rights, U.S. immigration policy, and economic justice. Some of the most memorable sessions were:
In some cases, I think that social workers are doing popular education, but perhaps not fully connecting it to an organizing agenda nor fully exploiting the available resources for popular educators. Examples that come to mind are domestic violence advocates who use street theater to raise awareness about the cycle of violence or mental health centers that use memoirs and other writings of survivors with mental illness to explore the barriers facing those with various mental diagnoses.
But I’m sure that there are others of us who are missing opportunities to integrate informal/popular education into our work–English-as-a-Second-Language classes that can teach anti-racism; consumer support groups that can dismantle stereotypes; parent education classes that can introduce non-violence. Done well, popular education weaves politics into pedagogy and removes the trappings of the educational process that can keep some from interfacing with learning.
I’ve linked to some of my favorite resources on popular education, both some of the excellent organizations dedicated to this work and some specific curricula/programmatic resources that can be integrated into other organizations’ work. Whatever you call it, popular education is accessible, radical, and potentially transformational. It accomplishes what traditional knowledge-dissemination often does not: it moves people to ACT on the issues about which they learn. And, really, it’s a lot of fun. Check out some of these links, and please let me know what you’re doing, as a social worker or one of our allies committed to social justice, to incorporate popular education into your work. What are your favorite resources? What have been some of your greatest challenges and best successes in this work?
Organizations:
Colectivo Flatlander
Highlander Research and Education Center
Materials:
Bibliography on Popular Education
I agree! There is so much potential in popular education (or what the Brits call “informal education”)…and overlap with social work. Every time I think of Highlander and it’s history I take heart.
Here’s one of my favorite popular/informal education websites:
http://www.infed.org/
I’m interested in what stories others have to share about how they’ve done popular education as social workers and allies.
So, it looks like “popular education” may be more overtly political and liberatory than “informal education”? Is this right? (I suppose it doesn’t matter in some ways what we call it…)
I’ve actually seen both of the terms used interchangeably, but I’d say there’s a definite political purpose to either–the idea that education should be a transformative force for democracy, not a corporatized productivity enhancer. Thanks for the link–I’ll check it out!
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