Célestin Freinet

his conception of popular education and his innovative techniques

Abstract

This article is the result of a bibliographical research about the work developed by Célestin Freinet, especially through his conception of popular and human education, as well as his innovative techniques, advocated during the period in which he was a primary school teacher, between 1920, when he entered the teaching career in a small school in the interior of France, and 1966, the year in which he died, in the French Alpes-Maritimes. By understanding that popular education in school should meet with reality and reproduce the  life of students in the classroom, its pedagogical proposal was developed through the creation of a series of pedagogical techniques that are still widely used in different educational institutions, even by educators who do not know him, among which are The Walking Classes, the Conversation Circles, the School Press, the School Newspaper, the Interscholastic Correspondence, the Wall Newspaper for School Assemblies and many others. Freinet sought to form free, autonomous and happy citizens capable of managing their own lives, placing the student at the center of the pedagogical process through a horizontal popular education, in which teacher and students were at the same level of importance, and which sought to build what he himself called a school of the people.