Popular Education 2.0: Grassroots Critical Education

 An IDEPSCA popular education circle on a South Central Los Angeles
 streetcorner near a Home Depot. R2W leaders are with day laborers
 studying the political economy of big-box stores, how workers
can protect themselves from predatory contractors, and principles of unity. 

What IS a "grassroots critical education?"

This version of education for critical consciousness* is a learning, teaching, and transformation process. It is rooted in the historical marginalization and life experiences of working class and poor people. It enables people to perceive and analyze political contradictions, then imagine and create cultural action for justice, peace, and environmental sustainability. It affirms and nurtures their inherent cultural attributes. It builds their capacity to break out of silence and re-emerge, to engage in transforming society.

A true liberation pedagogy deepens, sharpens, and inspires the mind, soul, and spirit.

It is dialogic and democratic, enabling people to organize their own knowledge- and engage in social change in a critical way.

Critical Projects

Here on the west coast, The Center for Young Women's Development, Youth United for Community Action, DEBUG, Engaging Education, Represent 2 Witness/Critical Faith,  IDEPSCA- and NAKEM YOUTH in Hawaii are creating liberation-centered education.   They combine effective organizing and direct action with cultural work and methodologies for personal transformation in a holistic process for social change. They are participant-run and politically dynamic. They deeply embrace and embody the spirit of liberation-centered organizing and cultural action. (check out Critical Projects page)

The essence of this holistic process is demonstrated in the courageous engagement of IDEPSCA participants as activists in the movement for worker and immigrant rights- many of them day laborers and domestic workers.

The criminal justice reform work of the The Center for Young Women's Development is implemented by young women who have emerged successfully from the juvenile justice system.

The muckraking young writers and advocates of Silicon Valley DEBUG come from the workplaces of electronic assembly, the low end of the high tech industry. 

Youth United for Community Action's environmental justice workers of East Palo Alto come from neighborhoods endangered by industrial pollution.

Engaging Education (E2) and Represent 2 Witness (Critical Faith) graduates are young leaders of color from places such as South Central Los Angeles, Honolulu's Kalihi District, East Oakland, and San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point who are creating new and inventive politics and culture and taking over the leadership of key campaigns and organizations.

NAKEM YOUTH of Honolulu's working class Kalihi District are Ilokano-American and other API youth breaking out the complex contradiction of language oppression and the pursuit of linguistic justice.

Remixing Popular Education

I've been moved by younger leaders of color who are reading and being inspired by Paulo Freire's work 40 years after the first publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  They recognize its continuing relevance to their generation.

Groups such as DEBUG and E2 embrace artistic expression, ethnic heritage, LGBTQ liberation, and a deep commitment to democratic decision-making as essential elements of their practices.

CYWD insures that its young women leaders experience personal healing as a central aspect of their development into community leaders.

The 'critical faith' methodology of  R2W: THE CRITICAL FAITH PROJECT enables young Samoan, Pilipino, African American, Tongan, and Latino leaders to problem-pose real issues
and connect their religious beliefs and personal spirituality to critical social change.

NAKEM YOUTH is breaking out the complex contradiction of langauge oppression and the pursuit of linguistic justice. The breathtaking stories in  Kambanbannuagan, Our Voices, Our Lives (Nakem Youth Press w/ TMI Global Press, 2010), are the synthesis of an ongoing Honolulu-based project lifting up the previously silent voices of Ilokano youth- in their own language.


New Culture, New Politics

Popular education has been one part of the recognition and emergence of popular culture as a significant factor of social change. Grassroots folk- ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and segments of the working class have long contributed to a counterculture that both resists and transforms the dominant culture. The spirit that arises from the tension created by inequality and domination is a profound source of human ingenuity and inspiration that benefits both the oppressed and the privileged.

Within the framework of working class and poor experience is an incredible cultural apparatus which uses every device at its disposal to announce the presence and value of everyday people. Recent popular movements have re-imagined and re-created strategies for change.  Strategies once limited to resisting autocracy and fighting economic domination have been fused with the always prevailing creativity, ingenuity, indigenous epistemology, spirit and soul of the people. Many  embrace and celebrate the music, dance, art, science, technology, indigenous language, and spirituality of 'everyday' folk.

Feminism and LGBTQ consciousness have also "flipped the script" of  gendered theories of social change.

The best grassroots popular education practices foster and utilize cultural innovation. It is richly evident in some of the new generation projects. The graphic designs, spoken word stylings and constructions, physical creativity in dance and sport, and technological improvisations of hip hop demonstrate the significance of human expression in conscientization- the process of consciousness and action for freedom.

Creative projects inspired by the ideas of Paulo Freire and popular education have helped generate autonomous grassroots organizations and broaden the class and racial diversity of projects and campaigns. They are generating conscientious and compassionate community leaders in North American social movements and civic participation.

Shaking Up The Institutions

Since the early 70s progressive teachers, public health educators, and community welfare workers have sought ways to integrate 'Freirean' ideas into social programs and school curricula. They created "spaces" within mainstream institutions to practice liberatory methods.  Paulo Freire and popular education are studied at major universities from UC Berkeley to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

In Canada, the Doris Marshall Institute, The Moment Project, and The Catalyst Centre were among the most innovative non-governmental, non-institutional projects created during this time. They have been highly effective in synthesizing the ideas of Freire and popular education for the social movements of North America.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed  also represents a critique of the contradictions inherent in the Western intellectual tradition itself. The discourses of cultural studies and critical pedagogy were ignited in part by Freire's groundbreaking critiques of the nature of social hierarchy and his radical epistemology. Progressive scholars have even created courses and departments that 'flip the script' of the so-called postmodern discourse, posing real challenges to the nature and scope of traditional academia.

In recent years, The Highlander Center, Project South, IDEPSCA, and several unsung but critical projects have fostered grassroots leadership using a pedagogy rooted in liberation and self-determination. On a national level, there are grassroots 'graduates' of popular education activities engaged throughout the social movement.

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Education for Critical Consciousness inspired the beginnings of popular education. They continue to challenge us to teach and learn not simply as educators, but as actors in an historical, utopian project.

What does an Education for Critical Consciousness look like?
Click here:
Education as a Practice of Social Change
The Craft of Critical Teaching




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