Making education popular

In English, "popular" does not have the same range of meaning as in Spanish, French or Portuguese for that matter.  Think of when we say popular culture, or pop-music, and what comes to mind are mass-manufactured artifacts.

As my thesis advisor wrote in a great book on death ritual in Oaxaca Mexico:

This word does not mean, as it is so often does in everyday English parlance, 'prevalent,' 'accepted,' 'standard,' 'in vogue,' or 'current'; 'popular,' in the context of Latin American studies, has more specific, technical, and pervasively political meaning, and can refer to any group of people that falls outside dominant culture or the inner circle of powerful or wealthy elites (K. Norget, Days of Death, Days of Life).

Personally I became interested in what gets called "popular education" after sojourning in West Africa.  The pedagogue most associated with this movement is Paulo Freire.

His ideas were a radical blend put into the furnace from working with adults in North-East Brazil. These adults were landless & illiterate, but achieved functional results in reading and writing within 40 days. 

Ultimately my interest in these topics led to research, reflection and drop-in-bucket actions. More importantly it stressed keeping my ego, priviliges in check, while stressing the aims, ideas and decision-making powers of learners.

Here's a post-Powerpoint presentation on main tenets of Freirean pedagogy.  Scroll around, zoom in & out like google-earth; edit, copy & adapt like MP3s.

Freire as Praxis on Prezi

Introductions

What's this all about?

This started as an assignment for an Enviro-Education Seminar part of my teacher training.  Our only directive was not to use paper.  I wanted to channel my alarm about hydro-systems into something positive.

As an educator my concern is re-presenting various sources of information with co-learners. However as an organizer for civic responsibility I feel discussion and research barely breaks the surface.

In the following meditations called Eau [pronounced Oh, "water" in French]-me, H20 My  my focus is:

to traverse with lowly droplets in their pathways through sentient beings and landscapes, production loops & flows, and spilling through consumers' hands. 

I argue in the following action/research posts that water needs to be re-conceptualized as one of the Earth's greatest luxuries and thereby respected.


Environmental justice is inseparable from the social: the manner we alter our aqua-cultures must be seeped in empowerment.


The following blog entries will 

1. articulate possibilities with classroom learners;
2. hyperlink to a variety of approaches, articles and actions ;
3. trace my stream of reflection and praxis

so to embody respect and understanding around water as a life-source.

Enjoy,

Monsieur B.


 

Blue Legacy

Granddaughter of Jacques Cousteau & advocate about watersheds globally, I heard Alexandra Cousteau speak to Vancouver's Board of Trade (repeated on Shaw TV).  What particularly resonates is her accent upon social media to  increase civic participation. 


In a biofuel vehicle their team has been embarking on a 138-day journey to promote and "host watershed action days."  

There is plenty of on-the-ground journalism going on being broadcast on her blog, ranging from the impacts from dispersants used during the BP clean-up, to the sociological impacts from spills of the not-so distant past.  The words of Dr Picou: "The Alaskan natives describe the day of the oil spill in Prince William Sound [Exxon Valdez 1999] as 'the day the water died.' And when the water died their whole culture was attacked systematically."


Simply put by Cousteau, the genesis of water problems has been / continues to be done by individuals;

By extension, stewardship requires that all stakeholders are responsible for what they send downstream in their respective watersheds.