Traditionally, Freirean pedagogy and popular education and its derivatives (most notably popular theatre) have worked with adult communities in informal settings. This setting has, of course, it’s own particular advantages and disadvantages, but it is worth noting that the applications of Popular Education is not solely restricted to either the informal education domain or the adult education domain.

Indeed, a number of scholars have been exploring the implementation of Popular Educationa theory and methodology in the area of high school education, an area that might be considered to the be the polar opposite of the traditional application of Popular Education. As opposed to adult education, educators working in this domain work with children. And instead of an informal setting, teachers in this area have to work within the boundaries of a strictly formalized curricula and setting.

However, the application of Freire’s work in such an area is an appealing prospect; to me, it seems that few institutions in a state seem to contribute to the acceptance of hegemony as much as schools. After all, one need only examine the work of people like John Taylor Gotto and you quickly come to a realisation that many schools (but not, I think, all) actively seek to not only oppress their students through the rigid application of coercive power, but also condition students to further accept such oppression in their wider and later lives. As an example, one might take the New South Wales History curriculum, which seeks to privilege the contributions to Australia made by certain groups – and in certain ways – over others. Furthermore, the way this curriculum is traditionally delivered – the Banking model that Freire described – only conditions students to further accept their role as passive objects with no further power to become more fully human.

Therefore, the idea of a theory that could empower students in this setting is a tempting one. However, it is a challenging prospect for teachers for a number of reasons. I intend to explore just one, in this blog posting – that of context. Freire’s work often highlights the importance of context, and it is especially pertinent in this discussion. Moving out of adult education into school education, one must recognize that both the age and the motivations of the group have changed. In addition, there are a number of constraining factors, like the demands of government bodies for teachers to cover certain skills and content, of which raising critical consciousness might come a long way down the list.

In addition, whereas traditional popular education works exclusively in the realm of marginalized groups, it is possible that when working in the school environment (and especially in a systemic religious school, like I do) one might be working with students who might be perfectly satisfied with the status quo. In this case, popular education might become more about recognizing privilege than understanding oppression. In this case, one must ask, what is the purpose of the popular educator? Is it to encourage students to recognize this privilege? And then to encourage them to commit, as Freire describes it, class suicide? It’s a confronting thought.

Even more confronting is the research that has been done regarding how an uncritical approach to privileging student experience might lead to the actual encouragement of oppressive views. In some examples that Kathryn Choules writes about, teachers attempting to apply a Freirean methodology to students from mixed groups might only encourage those who benefit from the status quo to speak out, thus concreting marginalised groups thoughts about oppression and their place in society.

Next blog post – Making the Method Fit the Message!