Community Development Journal Advance Access published May 20, 2010

& Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal. 2010 All rights reserved. For
permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
doi:10.1093/cdj/bsq022

Popular education and social

change in Latin America
Oscar Jara H.*

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Abstract This article identifies the shortcomings of the dominant approach to
education around the globe today, which does not lead to equitable
development. Latin American thinkers point to an alternative perspective
based on solidarity, inclusion and humanity. Such a perspective puts social
change at the heart of education and is evident in what is known as
Popular Education. Jara defines and analyses these complex terms, and
provides an historical overview of the development of popular education
in Latin America since 1960. He notes the key factors: popular education
is ‘substantively political’, and it is underpinned by a liberating pedagogy
which is possible in both formal as well as informal education, and which
builds people’s capacities to question their reality and existing ideologies,
and to learn and unlearn continuously.

Introduction

‘Liberating education does not produce social change by itself. . . but there will not
be social change without a liberating education’ Paulo Freire.1

In the last 50 years, Latin American countries have experienced constant

changes in the conceptualizations and strategies that underpin their edu-
cational systems. These changes have sought to instil the idea that education
and knowledge are essential factors for development. However, this has not
caused significant improvements for Latin American people (Rivero, 1999).
Since the 1980s, neo-liberal reforms that were imposed by international finan-
cial organizations exacerbated old problems, causing a fissure in the struc-
tures of education, which deepened educational inequality.

*Address for correspondence: Oscar Jara Holliday, email: oscar.jara@alforja.or.cr

1 Interview with Paolo Freire, Buenos Aires, 1985.

Community Development Journal Page 1 of 10

Page 2 of 10 Oscar Jara Holliday

The Latin American experience asks us to reflect on what should be the

main objectives and goals of education and what kind of knowledge and
skills are necessary to face the issues, challenges and new situations emer-
ging at the local, national and global level? What is the place of education
within these changing contexts? Today, more than ever, we need to rethink
our view of education and deepen our knowledge of the substantive
factors that can constitute an alternative approach to education. Efforts
towards social transformation need to be underpinned by the philosophi-
cal, political and pedagogical foundation of an educational paradigm. We
need to develop a comprehensive education which can contribute to the
construction of new social structures and new relationships between

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people based on justice, equality, solidarity and respect for the environ-
ment. An epistemological rupture is required and a political affirmation
that ‘opts for people as the subject’ as José Luis Rebellato, a Uruguayan phi-
losopher expressed it, able to build ‘history as a possibility [. . .] because
[men and women] are not simply objects of history but also its subjects’
(Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator). In the current context, the ethics of soli-
darity and the possibility of a new world only make sense and becomes
feasible if they emerge from those excluded people, who could take on
‘the universal responsibility orientated not to the survival of the species
but to achieving a truly human life, radicalising democracy in the global
society’ (Alfonso Ibáñez, Peruvian philosopher). In this new millennium,
the relationship between education and social change and the importance
of coherent, ethical –political and pedagogical action are not only topics
for analysis and study but also a decisive theoretical – practical challenge
that calls for our action. Thus, we need to be able to answer the question,
taking into account our own context and challenges, what kind of education
do we need for what kind of social change?

Education and social change

The concept of ‘social change’ has been studied and defined by many differ-
ent disciplines. It can be considered as a multidimensional notion, a process
of multiple forces in movement. There is a consensus around the idea that
social change cannot be produced by only one factor or phenomenon.
Different definitions concur that society is a system of multiple and diverse
relationships, thus social change refers to the modification of such relation-
ships. These definitions are different to each other primarily because of
the kind of modifications that they focus on. For example, Giddens refers
to ‘changes in the underlying structure [. . .] over a period of time’ in
order to argue that ‘in the case of human societies, in order to decide to
what extent and how a system is changing, modifications of basic
 Popular education and social change in Latin America Page 3 of 10

institutions in a specific period of time have to be manifest’ (Giddens, 1984,

p. 68). Giddens posits that although no mono-causal statement can explain
the nature and diversity of social change throughout the history of human-
ity, it is possible to identify ‘the factors that have persistently impacted on
social change: the physical world, political organization and cultural
factors’ (ibid.). The interrelationship between the different factors is
crucial, as their role and significance in the structural modification of
relationships of the social system can have different characteristics in differ-
ent periods. It can be argued that ‘changes that are taking place in the
current world make all cultures and societies more interdependent that
ever’ (ibid, p. 80).

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There are three different aspects to the levels and types of change. The first
is the concept of social change as a change in society (a partial modification of
relationships within a social structure or system) or, more radically, a change
of society (a mutation that leads to building a new system that is different
from the previous one), in which case the notion is closer to social transform-
ation or even social revolution. This differentiation is a complex one which is
at the core of political theory and has caused innumerable debates and rup-
tures within social and political movements in Latin America. The second is
the multiplicity of social changes which take place thanks to the combination
of different dynamics and movements in the elements of the system. It also
refers to social changes that are caused intentionally by actors, subjects and
agents who drive various modifications. Therefore, in this sense, every
social system is in constant flux. The third aspect deals with the scope of
such changes and their interrelated effects: changes at individual, group
and social level; changes at ‘microsocial’ and ‘macrosocial’ level. This too is
complex as there is strong interdependence between these levels as well as
different ideas about the direction of social change.
Finally, we should remember the meaning and value assigned to social
change: there is a stereotypical view in capitalism in which everything is ident-
ified with ‘development’ or ‘progress’. Therefore, we are thought to be living
‘increasingly advanced’ phases of our societies. However, from a critical per-
spective, technological discoveries and scientific innovation, the acceleration
and impact of the new media on our lives and the globalization of our relation-
ships, appear to be contributing to the weakening of the humanity in social
relationships and the erosion of the quality of life. The current crisis of the capi-
talist system shows this in all its naked glory. Although some have said that the
current financial crisis is temporary, it is increasingly evident that we are living
in a global crisis of the system, which is expressed in economic, environmental,
energy, food and moral crises.
Consequently, marked by these contemporary dilemmas and the theoreti-
cal challenges they pose, we revisit the question of the place of education in
Page 4 of 10 Oscar Jara Holliday

these changing times. Clearly, there are two conflicting perspectives. The first
one argues that we need an education that adapts itself to this changing
world. This is the proposal of international financial organizations, the
dominant neo-liberal discourse, the paradigm of instrumental rationality,
from which education is seen as another commodity that should contribute
to the qualification of resources of human capital so that societies success-
fully face the challenges of competition and innovation. On the other hand,
the second view argues that we need an education that contributes to chan-
ging the world, making it more humane. This perspective seeks to educate
people as agents of change with the capacity to influence economic, politi-
cal, social and cultural relationships as subjects of transformation. This is

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the perspective of ethical and emancipating rationality.

Popular education
This second perspective includes the search for a Latin American popular edu-
cation. ‘Popular’ in this context is understood in accordance with the work of
sociologist Gallardo (2006). On the one hand, it is based on the concept of
‘social people’ (social sectors that suffer a multitude of asymmetries, oppres-
sion, exclusion, exploitation etc.); and, on the other hand, based on the concept
of ‘political people’ (any sector that struggles to eliminate such asymmetries).
Therefore, ‘popular’ education refers to those political–pedagogical processes
that seek to overcome relationships of domination, oppression, discrimi-
nation, exploitation, inequality and exclusion. Seen from a positive point of
view, it refers to all educational processes that seek to build egalitarian and
fair relationships that respect diversity and equal rights amongst people.
Popular education is an educational trend characterized by being a socio-
cultural phenomenon and an educational conception at the same time. As a
socio-cultural phenomenon, popular education refers to a multitude of
diverse educational practices – formal and informal – which share a trans-
forming intentionality. As an educational conception, it points to the
construction of a new educational paradigm which challenges the dominat-
ing capitalist model of an authoritarian education that is mainly scholarized
and dissociates theory from practice.
Popular education is based on ethical –political principles for the construc-
tion of egalitarian and fair human relationships in different spheres of life. It
is also based on a critical and creative pedagogy for the full development of
cognitive, psychomotor, communication and emotional skills. It is often
understood simply as a mode of education or a didactic approach based
on active and participatory methods and techniques. However, thanks to
its ethical – political foundations, a number of pedagogic proposals, the
diversity and richness of experiences, and the considerable body of
 Popular education and social change in Latin America Page 5 of 10

literature that has been produced around it, it is also regarded as an edu-
cational trend, a complex and coherent theoretical – practical field that can
include different modes and cover multiple levels of educational practices
(community, group, formal, informal, with adults, children and youth, etc.).

Popular education in Latin America, 1960– 2009

Informal adult education underwent its most significant development in the
1960s and 1970s, thanks to the impact of the Cuban revolution. During this
time, there was an extraordinary drive for adult education from the perspec-
tive of community development. Likewise, that period witnessed the emer-

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gence of the ‘Pedagogy of Liberation’ as Freire originally called his proposal.
The similarities and differences between these two currents continued
throughout the following decades.2 In Brazil, the Movimiento de Educación
de Base (Movement for Grassroots Education) and the Centros Populares de
Cultura (Popular Cultural Centres) emerged prior to the military coup of
1964. Paulo Freire formulated an educational philosophy, based on their
practices, which redefined the relationship between education and human
beings, society and culture. Central to this philosophy was the concept of
awareness of the negative effects of a ‘banking and domesticating education’,
in other words the idea that education is deposited in the student rather than
an outcome of an interaction between student and teacher. From this
emerged the concept of a liberating pedagogy – a line of thought that decisi-
vely marked future knowledge and practices of popular education.3
Garcı́a and Juan (1980, p. 8) offers an excellent summary of this proposal
positing that popular education:
shows the reality of a new paradigm in education in the region, emerging
from multiple experiences amongst which informal rural experiences
undoubtedly play an important role [. . .] experiences that take place in
different contexts as a response to diverse dominant models of
development with diverse origins and manifestations, it is clear that we
can talk about a shared feeling, a shared approach to the problem of
education of people [. . .] These experiences and educational programmes
seek to emerge from the participants’ realities, from their concrete historic
situation, generating their awareness of their economic and social
situation [. . .] The way to proceed is normally in groups or cooperatives

2 See Brandão (1981): Los caminos cruzados: forma de pensar y realizar educación en América Latina,
which introduces the relationship between ‘permanent education’ (European influence), ‘adult
education’ and ‘popular education’ (Latin American influence) stating that ‘it represents the return of
education of the popular classes and education as a whole to its nature as a movement’.
3 For a comprehensive reference to his life and work, see: Paulo Freire, uma Bio-bibliografı́a,
Cortez-Unesco-Instituto Paulo Freire, São Paulo, 1996.
Page 6 of 10 Oscar Jara Holliday

that are organised and democratic. Personal growth is sought through the
relationship with others [. . .] There is a trend towards a horizontal
pedagogic relationship between the educator and the educated. The
teacher is more of a guide, monitoring a process in which the group tends
to have an increasing autonomy; many times promoters from the
community are used. Independent learning, self-discipline,
self-assessment and self-management are mentioned [. . .] Education is
closely related to action [. . .] In this sense, the approach is inevitably
political or has political implications in a general sense of the term [. . .]
Finally, the participative nature of the programmes, the objectives and the
theoretical statements lead to questioning orthodox methods of research,
planning and assessment of education.

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In the 1980s, these ideas spread through every corner of Latin America,
linking up with the organizational processes of urban and rural social
movements. National and continental coordination groups for popular edu-
cation were created, and multiple events, meetings and debates took place.
Some of the most prominent initiatives of this period were related to literacy
and basic education, with a combination of popular education and popular
organization, conceptualizations of dialectic methodology, human rights,
political education, health, popular communication, civil society and the
State and participatory action research.
In the 1990s, changes in the global context shook social and political propo-
sals for transformation in Latin America, leading to a time of crisis, disenchant-
ment, abandonment, exploration and critique. It was also an interesting period
of theoretical reflection and debate within the field of popular education, since
the collapse of the political–ideological discourse that had characterized it
since the 1970s made way for new theoretical perspectives. Gaps and contra-
dictions became evident, and new topics emerged with a reflexive approach
that emphasized debate and the formulation of alternatives. The discussion
about the issue of education intensified, fuelled by perspectives from the
‘World Conference on Education for All’ held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990.
Thus a new attitude emerged regarding the relationship between popular edu-
cation and pedagogy, public policy and formal education.
Furthermore, the close linkages of new Latin American social movements
to processes of popular education generated a rich range of new approaches
to popular education and citizenship, gender, development, local power
and the environment. The most important movements at this time, such
as the Movimiento de Trabajadores Rurales Sin Tierra, MST (Movement of
Landless Rural Workers) in Brazil, the Zapatista movement in Mexico
and initiatives of municipal decentralization, participatory budgets and
gender-aware budgets in many countries in Latin America were largely
accompanied by processes of popular education.
 Popular education and social change in Latin America Page 7 of 10

By the time of the turn of the millennium, organizations that were

working towards popular education in Latin America were reflecting and
debating the validity of popular education in the new historical moment.
This led to a call for the reformulation of popular education. Popular edu-
cation initiatives sought to find new guiding paradigms for their practices,
methods and conceptual reflections. In the ensuing decade, there have been
many debates around the new contexts, spaces and challenges for popular
education. In particular, those debates have been driven by the Latin Amer-
ican Council for Adult Education, the Consejo de Educacion de Adultos en
America Latina (CEAAL) in its assemblies (Recife, 2004; Cochabamba,
2008), and many are documented in CEAAL’s magazine, La Piragua.4

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These debates link practice and theory, and analyse concrete experiences,
with a critical view of global challenges and using new concepts, categories
and frames of interpretation. These reflections are enriched thanks to the
emphasis given to the need for the systematization of experiences as a
resource for theorization of practices. These priorities led to the emergence
of the Latin American Programme for Support to the Systematization of
Experiences in CEAAL, which has developed a series of events and reflec-
tions on this topic and is becoming an important virtual resource.5

Educating to democratize power relations

The political dimension of education has been frequently mentioned in the
field of popular education, and in practice has been greatly emphasized.
However, some consider that the political dimension is not a dimension
of popular education, but that popular education in itself is political.
Some years ago, the contradiction between the political and the pedagogical
was portrayed as the differentiating factor in the debate on the conceptual-
ization of popular education amongst popular educators in Latin America.
In this regard, Freire argued that for him ‘education is a political –pedago-
gical process. This means that it is substantively political and adjectively
pedagogical’.6 Moreover, Freire helped to dispel the myth that popular edu-
cation is in conflict with formal education. On the basis of his experience as
Secretary of Education in Sao Paulo, he explored how the logic behind a lib-
erating popular education that generates the capacity for people to become
subjects who can transform history could be put into practice in the formal

4 See www.ceaal.org La Piragua, No. 18 to 29 and especially No. 20 and 21: Debate Latinoamericano
sobre Educación Popular.
5 www.alforja.or.cr/sistem/biblio.html.
6 Taken from a conversation between Paulo Freire, Oscar Jara and Carlos Núñez at his home in Sao
Paulo, in 1987.
Page 8 of 10 Oscar Jara Holliday

education system, obviously radically transforming it rather than only

reforming some of its secondary aspects. Similar efforts took place during
the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in 1980s, when it was stated that
all ‘new education in Nicaragua at all levels and in all forms should be
popular education’ (Cardenal, 2008, p. 160).7
The political dimension makes reference to the power relations that connect
the plural and dispersed network of human relations and which inform the
possibilities of becoming social and historical subjects of transformation.
Therefore, power relations are exercised in education with direct conse-
quences for the development or inhibition of human capacities. A democratic,
critical and liberating education contributes to training subjects with the skills

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to transform social relationships and relationships with the world. A domes-
ticating, alienating and authoritarian education inhibits the construction of
autonomous subjects (Freire, 1970, 2000).8 In sum, all forms of education, as
cultural and political action, contribute to building a determined culture, a
way of thinking and feeling, an intellectual and moral direction that struggles
to be hegemonic, seeking to widen consensus from the ethical perspective
driven by organized spaces of ‘civil society’ (in the words of Gramsci) or, as
it is currently phrased, of ‘active citizenship’ (Pontual, 1995). Hence, it
cannot avoid playing this role, even whereas it may pretend to be neutral.
Ethics, politics and education in this way become an interdependent trio
in which education is the dynamic, active and creative factor for subjects
who are able to build, based on a utopian perspective, more human con-
ditions for people and their environments. This is why education and its
role in history go beyond teaching, learning, school systems, reasons, judge-
ments and verbalized discourses, teachers and students, norms and rules.
This is why the ethical, political and pedagogical searching of the different
popular education initiatives in Latin America point towards a new edu-
cational paradigm different from the currently dominant one. In such a
paradigm, men and women are instigators of change; they represent the
hope for a different society; and they represent a different mode of edu-
cation which enables social change to build ‘a different world’ in which
power relations are democratic and egalitarian at all levels.

Conclusion
In sum, processes of popular education in Latin America today are concerned
with a kind of education that allows people to become social subjects and actors
with certain key capacities. Firstly, they are able to break with the ruling social

7 P. Fernando Cardenal, Minister of Education, National Seminar in La Palmera, Diriamba 1985.

8 See also Bourdieu and Passeron (1998), Apple (1982). Giroux (1995).
 Popular education and social change in Latin America Page 9 of 10

order that is imposed upon them and presented as the only historical possi-
bility (i.e. the model of neo-liberal globalization). Secondly, they are able to
question existing ideological and ethical stereotypes and patterns which are
presented as absolute truths (e.g. individualism, competition, the market as
the regulator of human relations). Thirdly, people are able to continuously
learn and unlearn. Popular education gives them ownership of a capacity to
think. Fourthly, people are able to imagine and create new spaces and relations
between human beings at home, in their communities, jobs, countries and
regions, and have the capacity to generate a vital sympathetic disposition
towards the social and environmental surroundings as a daily affirmation.
Finally, such an education enables people to affirm themselves as autonomous

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people, not self-centred but able to overcome the antagonism between the other
and the self, and to develop their rational, emotional and spiritual potential as
men and women. This also requires overcoming a patriarchal and misogynistic
socialization of gender and building new power relations in their everyday
lives and in the system of social, political and cultural relations.
All this active searching for alternative constructions is carried out in very
different spaces and modes: through leadership training; community
organization; programmes of citizen participation at the municipal,
regional or national level; primary and secondary schools; technical insti-
tutions and universities; programmes to encourage the role of women; pro-
jects of social economy; programmes that promote youth and adult literacy;
political training; promotion of pedagogical innovations; teacher training;
encouraging the role of indigenous populations; participatory communi-
cation using traditional media and new technologies; distance learning;
and projects to train educators on national and international networks,
amongst others. As each era presents its particular challenges for social
transformation, Popular education in Latin America meets these challenges
by critically transforming itself. It is always under construction.

Oscar Jara H. is a Sociologist and Popular Educator. Born in Perú, lives In Costa Rica and since
1980 has worked in several Latin American Popular and Community Education programs. He
also works as Director of Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones Alforja (a Costarican NGO)
and Coordinator of the Latin American Program of Systematization of Experiences of the Latin
American Adult Education Council, CEAAL (oscar.jara@cepalforja.org).

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