Popular education vs. education for the popular classes

emancipation or adaptation?

Abstract

In writing this article, we aimed to propose a friendly debate on the role of education in relation to training aimed at the popular classes, in light of the reflections produced by Paulo Freire. In addition, we consider the ideas formulated by other intellectuals in the fields of education, sociology, and neuroscience, as well as how this training aligns with the projects of reality that we intended to produce. Furthermore, we present an embryonic discussion for our research group, especially related to the place of sensory experience in the formation of the individuals as one of the possible dimensions of human experience. The purpose of this textual organization is to reflect on whether we are contributing to the formation or adaptation of the subject to the existing reality with its limitations and contradictions. In this sense, we start from a bibliographic analysis of theoretical contributions that can help us in this endeavor, confronting the aspects of reality that cross our minds as we think and write. This movement led us to consider that, in view of the hegemonic perspectives that guide school education in Brazil, popular education, as a political-pedagogical project that presupposes the formation of an emancipated individual, has no place in schools, which empty reality of meaning and sustain the adaptation of subjects to existing reality.