COMMUNITY ORGANIZING & TRAINING:

Popular Education teaches people to question some of the assumptions they make about the world, things they take for granted.  It recognizes that there is a dominant class in the USA that operates from a particular set of values, values that are taught to our children and are reinforced by most institutions, e.g., schools, government, churches, media, etc.  Because they are the dominant class, they get to set the rules by which we all must live by and the standards that we all most meet.  Not surprisingly, the rules reared people who reflect their values and punish those who don’t.  These rules and standards are presented, not as a value-based set of rules that advantage a particular group, but as natural, as coming from nature.  Not accepting these values is seen as crazy.  We are taught through our institutions to accept them without question.  Even though these rules serve the dominant class at the expense of the rest, most people accept them and even work to maintain them.

A clear example of how this process works is our educational system.  A core value of the dominant classes in the USA is the “American Dream”, i.e, anyone can achieve their goals if they have the talent and put in the work no matter what situation they were born into.  Education, in this view, is the great equalizer.  Whether born rich or poor, through education, you can achieve your aspirations.  Because all have access to education, one’s success or failure in life is due to whether one took advantage of what was offered.  Those who succeeded did, those who failed did not.  Success or failure is in the hands of the individual.

A closer look at our educational system, however, would show that, while every child does have access to education, every child does not have access to a quality education.  The quality of one’s education depends on where one lives, which depends on one’s economic status and ethnicity.  When half of African American youth in this country attend high schools where graduation is not the norm, do we blame the youth for this failure, or do we look deeper?  The values of the dominant class put enormous emphasis on the individual suggesting that, yes, the failure does belong to the youth or, more accurately, their parents.  This view conveniently ignores the decisions made by people in positions of power that created these extreme differences in the levels of investment in education based on one’s wealth which, along with ethnicity, dictates where one lives.  If you examine where we put our resources in addressing these disparities you would see that most of the resources are dedicated to changing the behavior of school children, their parents, and/or their teachers.  Very little resources are spent on changing the conditions that lead to the glaring disparities.

Popular Education is about getting people to question these values and rules by exposing how they provide a hidden advantage to some members of society at the expense of others.  Because Popular Education is overtly political, it seeks to understand why this disparity persists by asking the question, who benefits?  There is a great deal of research that shows how wealthy communities and highly educate adults, as a group, are aware of these educational disparities and work to maintain them.  This way, the pool of competitors for the college slots and jobs that they want for their children is smaller.

At the heart of America culture is the belief that people who work hard should be rewarded and that anyone who has the talent and puts in the work should be able to achieve their goals regardless of the conditions they were born into.  The core values are admirable and is held by many whether they are part of the dominant class or not.  It is, in fact, a value that draws people to the USA from throughout the world.  The dominant class is served by this value when achieving one’s goal is seen as a singularly individual act.  When the rules set by the dominant class strip away the responsibility of all other factors in a person’s life except their own behavior, it absolves itself of any responsibility.  If people accept the rules as fair and unbiassed they simultaneously take full responsibility for the failure of the youth.  The Popular Education process opens the participant’s eyes to all the factors that contribute to the conditions they are focused on.  It is from this analysis that people develop a plan of action.