Christian Chevalier and Jean Karl Deschamps will animate on Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Toulon headquarters of the Education League the conference “Popular education, a necessity of 21e century ”: the title of the report commissioned in 2029 for the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE).
Marseilles: It has been a long time since popular education was put forward …
Christian Chevalier: The word is almost disappearing from political discourse even now, and it’s very interesting, it’s coming back. Surely it was because of the change in the famous education executives who entered politics and who took on the responsibilities. But if we look at the level of Ve Republic we have only two ministers with the title of popular education in their portfolio, the last is Valérie Fourneyron of Hollande five -year term.
I remind you that the National Council of Resistance wants to link national education and popular education because there really is continuity and that in the post-war period it was a major element of reconstruction. But over time, there is a kind of invisibility.
You said that the Yellow Vests movement provided real energy …
CC: Many commission members don’t know what popular education is or have a caricatural idea about it. Basically the popular education is the gauchos, the zozos who are never happy.
With the very loud and unsatisfactory spread of the social explosion of the Yellow Vests that once occupied the land, the territory of questions of democratic practices and questions of democratic transparency, questions under Republican values. , in citizenship, it is a trigger that reveals the role played and can be played by actors in popular education. Because there are two channels in the company that make it possible to channel debates: the trade-union channel and the associative channel of popular education that suddenly took over again in all its directions.
What is the process?
CC: To get an idea and generate an opinion, we interviewed a lot of people, direct actors, researchers, academics. And what really fascinated us was the humility of the famous educational actors who are in the field and have accomplished a lot in a much more diverse field. The goal is therefore to make proposals to restore visibility to popular education structures.
Requirements updated …
CC: It has already shown that popular education is not an old thing where we spit but where we see actors of social change who are very clearly managing the difficulties in our society.
In a French society where the number of poor people is increasing, associations have a huge role to play, if only in terms of housing and food. It is an element of national unity.
Popular education is always in motion, under construction and adapts to society and its territory, as close to the population and therefore to their problems. Hence the absolute need for public actors, whether local or national, to help these structures, to make them work and to develop them.
But popular education is also an education for citizenship, democracy, secularism and we are more measuring the stakes this year in the election where the abstention rate is very high and the confrontations are brutal.
But it remains a weak economic model, as you can see
CC: Actually, the world of association is even more subject to calls for projects, which sometimes also puts actors in popular education in competition and prevents social change, because from your entry into a call for projects, it can be a straitjacket. where the invention of the actors is slowed down.
This is why there is a whole lot of advocacy work being done by the League of Education with parliamentarians, elected officials and ministries to try to produce this beautiful idea of popular education that represents an extra soul. and not just a particular service provider because through its history it carries within it all the values of the Republic.
Social sharing cannot be resolved through email or through Twitter, but through direct contact with well -known and recognized players in the field, even in the field of early childhood, support for single women or children. there is no inheritance in the neighborhoods.
They are the carriers of a project of compassionate society, of unity, of equality, where we do not trample on each other. Popular education is a real political topic.