Grassroots Movements, Development Discourse and Popular Education

Practitioners as well as students of popular education are facing a dilemma. On the one hand, a tremendous resurgence of popular educational movements among the Third World populace has challenged not only the paradigms of education but also the underlying premises of development and the process of social change. On the other, theoretical approaches to discussing and evaluating popular educational movements are still based on traditional parameters: modernization as a inevitable goal; the supposedly neutral role of education; and nonformal education as a viable alternative education for the rural poor.