Extension on Paulo Freire and actual demands in the popular sectors

inter-context dialogues between field and city

Abstract

The text aims to situate the experiences of university extension courses which are performed by the dimension of the Popular, in the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI) – Popular University Project –; and in the State University of Piauí (UESPI) – League for Popular Legal Advising (Projeto Corpo de Assessoria Jurídica Popular - Coraje) Project –, inspired by Paulo Freire’s conception of university extension, which recognizes the popular economic classes in the updating of knowledge production mode referenced by the dialogue between popular knowledge and scientific knowledge, as a matrix for university extension’s decolonizing, and in the democratization of the education. The discussion finds methodological background in the participative research, of qualitative approach, considering the documentary data and experiences from the partakers of university extension’s actions. The dialectical method guides the data analysis. The theoretical support are, among others, Freire (1983), Lyra (1996), Gadotti, (2013), and Melo (2014). The results point out that the experiences of the Popular University and from Coraje, as university extension programs, update the scientific nature of the university as to its indissociable feature from society’s sociopolitical dimension and from the relationship between scientific knowledge and popular knowledge; it reaffirms the territories of the popular economic classes as base of updating of the commitment of the university, with the guarantee of the rights of the oppressed people both in the countryside and in the city as subjects partakers of an own science.