Education for freedom in the new normality
In what part of our body do we keep fear, oblivion, silence, violence? After 200 years we are celebrating the bicentenary of independence in Latin America and we continue with an education that treats us like pawns; it is a patriarchal, colonial and capitalist education. Everything has been designed by those who dominate with an overwhelming power that hurts and hurts; we continue to be killed daily, by covid, by poverty, by pro-death institutions, by bullets fired at the people or by indifference.
At this moment it is important to wake up again, this new normality reveals the worst that we have lived through for centuries. We cannot conceive of any other education than Popular Education in order to be able to walk through life in a free and just way. In this new normality we feel that popular education reconstructs us, inspires us. It motivates us to continue in utopia, in shared dreams. Popular education mobilises us towards the generation of changes and transformations, of individual and collective empowerment against situations of injustice and inequity. Popular education as an instrument of liberation, because in the face of this model of death, we choose life with dignity, solidarity, sisterhood, sharing, embrace and caress. Popular education for enjoyment, pleasure, tenderness, bonds, hope and the joy of living.
In our peoples we continue to struggle, those peoples who continue to give us a lesson in dignity, who in their many resistances and re-existences teach us from humility to organise ourselves from below and with our hearts. In this awakening, the importance of popular education is renewed, that possibility of neighbourhood and community reflection to think about life from another place, to take care of ourselves and to sustain ourselves collectively, and to continue making love and revolution. (Voices from the heart of popular educators in different parts of Abya Yala, July, 2021).
In July 2021 we held the virtual meeting "Popular educators in times of change, voices from the heart" with the participation of around 35 people from various Latin American countries: Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. This virtual meeting is part of the reflection that we began in 2020 during three face-to-face meetings in Mexico.
The idea of the meeting was to reflect on our pedagogical practice in this present context, to map our body-territory from a care approach and to review our pedagogies of pandemics and re-existences in the face of the new normalities.
Watch the meeting below!