The Neighbourhood Organisation as a Pedagogic Project

This study is a look at the neighbourhood organisation as a pedagogie project wherein local residents undergo a subjective transformation in their level of consciousness. Within this context, two pedagogies are examined. One, which has close affinities with Marxism, seeks to expose the structural contradictions underlying the problems confronted by the organisation, and attempts to translate this knowledge into practice. The other, which is closely associated with the humanist tradition, tries to decipher intersubjective and intrasubjective barriers, to expose repressed desires, and to encourage their fulfillment in a creative manner. Neither of these pedagogies is found to be satisfactory. The Marxist pedagogy subordinates human values, that is, ‘what is' to the absolute of ‘what ought to be’. In contrast, the humanist pedagogy tends to relativise the organisation's values, and accept them uncritically and thus infer the ‘what ought to be’ from the ‘what is’. In a preliminary attempt to break away from moral objectivism and moral subjectivism, a third pedagogy is tentatively suggested: one whose essence lies in a synthesis between the two at the level of practice.