Popular education
The diversity of projects and endeavors claiming or receiving the label of popular education makes the term difficult to precisely define.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's L'Emile: Or, On Education (1762) was another obvious theoretical influence, as well as the works of N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), at the origins of the Nordic movement of folk high schools.
A main component of the workers' movement, popular education was also strongly influenced by positivist, materialist and laïcité, if not anti-clerical, ideas.
Following the 1872 Hague Congress and the split between Marxists and anarchists, Fernand Pelloutier set up in France various Bourses du travail centres, where workers gathered and discussed politics and sciences.
The Jules Ferry laws in the 1880s, establishing free, laic (non-religious), mandatory and public education, were one of the founding stones of the Third Republic (1871–1940), set up in the aftermaths of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune.
One of its consequences was for them to set up free educational lectures of humanist topics for adults in order to struggle against the spread of antisemitism, which was not limited to the far-right but also affected the workers' movement.
During the Red Vienna period (1919–34) the Viennese Volkshochschule played an important role in providing popular education attracting significant levels of participation from both factory and office workers.
They also attracted significant participation from prominent people associated with the Vienna Circle: Otto Neurath, Edgar Zilsel, Friedrich Waismann and Viktor Kraft.
The Escuela Moderna, and Ferrer's ideas generally, formed the inspiration for a series of Modern Schools in the United States,[5] Cuba, South America and London.
Following the 1981 presidential election that brought to power the Socialist Party (PS)'s candidate, François Mitterrand, his Minister of Education, Alain Savary, supported Jean Lévi's initiative to create a public high school, delivering the baccalauréat, but organized on the principles of autogestion (or self-management): this high school took the name of Lycée autogéré de Paris (LAP).
Since 2005, the LAP has maintained contact with self-managed firms, in the REPAS network (Réseau d'échanges de pratiques alternatives et solidaires, Network of Exchange of Solidarity and Alternative Practices")[8] A second generation for such folk high school meant to educate the people and the masses spread in the society (mainly for workers) just before the French Front populaire experience, as a reaction among teachers and intellectuals following the February 6, 1934 riots organized by far-right leagues.
Issues devoted to free-thinking such as workers' self-management were thought and taught during that time, since the majority of attendants were proletarians interested in politics.
Famous intellectuals such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and others held seminars there, in full classrooms where no seats could be found.
Although education was normalized in the 1980s, during the Mitterrand era, in both Saint-Denis and Vincennes, these universities have retained a less traditional outlook than the classic Sorbonne, where courses tend to be more conservative and sociological composition more middle-upper class.
The Ciph was first directed by Derrida, then by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and has had as teaching members Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Sidi Mohamed Barkat, Geoffrey Bennington, François Châtelet, José Gil, Olivier LeCour Grandmaison, Antonio Negri, and others.
In 2002 philosopher Michel Onfray initiated Université populaire de Caen[11] in his hometown and starting a long seminar dealing with hedonistic philosophy from ancient times to May'68 events in French society, for at least ten years.
In 2004, Onfray expanded the experience[13] to other cities such as Arras, Lyon, Narbonne, Avignon, and Mons (in Belgium); each with various lectures and teachers joining his idea.
The Universités populaires in Argentan is meant to deliver a culture of culinary tastes to nonworking people, through lectures and practises of famous chefs.
Freire, and consequently the popular education movement in Latin America, draws heavily upon the work of John Dewey and Antonio Gramsci.
Nevertheless, Highlander Folk School, for example, played a significant role in the civil rights movement providing a space for leaders to consult and plan.
