Social Movements and Popular Education in Brazil: Paulo Freire´s Contribution

Social Movements and Popular Education in Brazil: Paulo Freire´s Contribution

Alder Júlio Ferreira Calado (Brazilian Sociologist and Popular Educator)

Brazilian society, similar to many others, is composed of several socially-organized forces including NGOs, associations, unions and social movements. Popular Social Movements play the most important role in structural changes. Among the main factors contributing in their organization, Popular Education, taken here in Paulo Freire´s perspective, plays a decisive role.

Popular Social Movements  constitute, therefore, the main protagonists of structural social changes. Although they are not the only ones, the Social Movements – especially those ones offering an alternative project toward a new society, radically opposed to Capitalism - are certainly the most important protagonists of structural social changes, such as the main social revolutions in the last centuries. In distinct areas of the knowledge – and it is not different in social sciences - the concepts and their use are not univocal nor ideologically aseptic.

There is a long list of criteria taken as able to define the characteristics of a social movement. In fact, there are, in contemporary Brazil, a large number of social forces belonging to civil society (NGOs, demanding associations grassroot  advocacy groups), important human rights organizations, different groups organized according to criteria such as gender, ethnical and generation relationships demanding specific social policies, and so on). Here, nevertheless, we emphasize those social movements involved in social struggles as protagonists of the process of the construction of a new society.

In Brazil, such a profile of social movement concerns just few social movements, such as the Peasant Leagues (1954-1964) and the MST (Social Movements of the Landless Workers). Among their main characteristics, it must be underlined: the cultivation of an alternative sociability opposed to a class society, particularly the capitalist society; the engagement of all of their members in a continuous formative process (beyond school education), according to an omnilateral perspective of formation, by means of which it becomes able to assure its activists the development of their human potentialities; the continuous analysis of the social-historical reality, according to their social horizon and their own class values; the necessary conditions of organization and mobilization, according to their criteria, including the definition of their partners belonging to the same struggle field, their allied forces, as well as their class enemies.

Social Movements constitute then one of the sectors of civil society, concerning either a production area  (unions) and social forces directly linked to socio-cultural relationships (like the Students, Women, Human Rights Movements) or to those ones involved in demanding public services as well as promoting cultural values (Ethnical, Environmental, Youth movements…).

Popular Education as the humanizing and formative process of Social Movements – Among different social movements, just a few of them – those ones having an alternative model of sociability – find in Popular Education (taken according to a Freirean perspective) their principal formative horizon and tool. In their formative process of humanization, Popular Education is understood as the formative process having as its protagonists the popular classes and their allied forces, incessantly orientated by the Utopia (in permanent construction) of an economically democratic, socially co-responsible, politically participative, and culturally plural society, whose process must be characterized by  practices, proceedings, dynamics and attitudes corresponding to the same social horizon. Such a Popular Education must be incessantly impregnated by characteristics such as: an intensive participation of all of their members, by means of their grassroots organizations, in making important decisions; surmounting of the dichotomization between manual work and intellectual work; the alternation, among all of their base and representative members of their different functions and social tasks; the use of different artistic expressions beyond oral or writing expressions; the continuous formation of all of their members in an omnilateral perspective, so that they try to develop different potentialities. These characteristics synthesize a large number of other points concerning the common horizon, the paths in reaching it, as well as the attitudes of every group and member engaged in such a process. It demands, for example, an alternative view of society where human beings are considered inserted in a social context, as a member of a complex net of relationships, by means of which, more and more awareness of his/her boundaries and finite condition, he/she can fully attain their potential. Another dimension characterizing a Freirean perspective of Popular Education concerns the incessant development of their perceptive capacities, allowing them to see things, facts, and historical situations which they were previously not able to see, hear or feel.

In that sense, the historical memory of human experiences and discoveries, in different historical periods, plays an important role. It deals with a Popular Education which takes into consideration the human being, not as a predatory and dominating being of the Earth, but rather as a partner with all of its inhabitants. 

Paulo Freire as the theoretical reference of the Popular Education and  social movements - Among important names of the Popular Education movement in Brazil, Paulo Freire is the  most representative. Born in Recife, Paulo Freire (1921-1997), due to the nature of his pedagogical-political contribution, became the most important Brazilian Pedagogue in the last century. His legacy is recognized all over the world, as someone whose main contribution was to have enabled people to learn and exercise, not only the reading of the alphabet, but, above all, to read the world with a critical vision.. Despite the way he invented – known as Paulo Freire´s Method - rendering didactic his philosophical thought, this must not be considered as his main contribution, but rather his political-pedagogic proposal, taking into account his ethic commitment with the construction of a new sociability whose horizon, protagonists and paths have similar characteristics of those concerning Popular Education, as defined above. Paulo Freire, not only in his works, but also throughout his practice, in Brazil as well as in other countries (Chile, USA, Switzerland, where he lived during his long political exile, has marked his legacy with some characteristics dynamically linked to each other. Inspired by some philosophical trends such as Humanism (Fromm, Mounier…), Existentialism (Marcel, Sartre, Beauvoir…), Liberation Theology (James Cone, Gutiérrez, Hugo Assmann…) and Marxism (Marx, Gramsci, Guevara…), he was able to reinvent them by gathering different elements in order to formulate his theses with a notable inventiveness. Among his pedagogic formulations, we must underline the following ones. Born as an incomplete being, who is socially conditioned, the human being is ontologically turned to construct his liberty. Education – especially Popular Education - is the adequate space and the way by which he develops his potential, in a continuous process of his humanizing. Such a process requires, at first, an adequate sociability, either in the mode of production, or in the mode of consummation, reason by which it is not possible to assure such a process in a class society, especially in the capitalist one. Popular Education is a consistent social space to accomplish that process, in the proportion such as every member assumes his inseparable condition of a protagonist simultaneously exercising his learning and teaching dimension. More favorable conditions are assured, insomuch as the protagonists develop their epistemological curiosity, thanks to which, from their spectators condition, they reach becoming cultural producers, in the horizon of their social and personal emancipation. In order to reach the social horizon they aim, they must be continuously fed by new values and attitudes such as social justice, international solidarity, sharing of the richness of the Humanity, cooperation, solidarity, inter-connectedness with all beings of the Universe, respect of cultural differences (Interculturality ), and respectful relationships with the Sacred.   In this process, the protagonists take into account their social and pedagogic role whose accomplishment is associated to a persistent commitment with social transformations as well as with every day human and social relationships, thanks to their incessant search and exercise of alternative attitudes. Aiming to reach such a horizon, they appeal to the transformation force of Freirean Utopia, by cultivating their historical memory about social movements and struggles, in different historical periods, as well as their individual and collective protagonism. They deal, therefore, with a fructuous experience associated, under some aspects, to Ernst Bloch´s “Awake Dream” concept. In Freire´s perspective, it rather concerns his Utopia concept. 

It is not superfluous to remember that a large number of homage titles gained by him, in different universities and academic institutions, all over the world, concern the title “Doctor Honoris Causa”.

Even after his death, in 1997, Freire´s thought and legacy live on, either among Social Popular Movements, or in the praxis universe of Popular Education. His writings (among them: Education, the practice of freedom; Education or Communication?; Pedagogy of the Oppressed; Cultural Action for Freedom; Pedagogy in process: the letters to Guinea-Bissau; Literacy: reading the word & the world; Learning to question: a pedagogy of liberation; Education and Change; Pedagogy of Hope, Pedagogy of the city; Pedagogy of Autonomy)  play a decisive role in their formative process as well as in the social struggles toward a new society. A consistent proof may be the expressive expansion, in Brazil and elsewhere, of different research and studies groups, taking him as their theoretical reference.

Bibliography

CALADO, Alder J. F. Direitos Humanos X Capital: potencializando a intervenção nos movimentos e organizações sociais de base. João Pessoa: Idéia, 2003.

_______________. (Org.). Conferências dos Colóquios Internacionais Paulo Freire. 3 vols. Recife: Bagaço, 2007.

GOHN, Maria da Glória. Teoria dos Movimentos Sociais, 5ª ed., São Paulo: Loyola, 2006.

__________________. Movimentos Sociais e Educação, 6ª ed., Petrópolis: Cortez, 2005

LEHER, Roberto. Educação Popular como estratégia política. In: JEZINE, Edineide e ALMEIDA, M. de Lourdes Pinto (Orgs.). Educação e Movimentos Sociais: novos olhares. Campinas: Alínea, 2007, pp. 19-32.

SALES, Ivandro da Costa. Os Desafios da Gestão Democrática. Em diálogo com Gramsci. Sobra: UVA; Recife: Ed. da UFPE, 2006.

SOUZA, João Fracisco de. A Democracia dos Movimentos Sociais Populares. Uma comparação entre Brasil e México. Recife: Bagaço, 1999.