Commoning Education: Lessons from Latin American Popular Education in Buenos Aires – Argentina

Democratic education is a condition for the construction and preservation of democracies.

On this basis, UNESCO purposed in 2015 to rethink education as a common good to reverse the privatised views of education, dominant since the 1990s, which diluted the key role of education in the construction of democratic citizenship.

This interdisciplinary action aims to reinforce a conception of education as a common good by foregrounding experiences that stretch beyond the traditional school model and actively engage civil society actors in an education for transformation and social justice.

To this end, EduCommon will develop knowledge exchange through an intercultural dialogue between two educational/social trends recently developed in crises contexts: Commons Paradigm (CP) and Popular Education (PE).

CP has gained strength in Europe after the 2008 crisis in several social domains, including education; however, so far has not provided relevant applications in education.

PE is a long tradition in Latin America that offers numerous experiences organising education as a common good, as show the current projects in Buenos Aires emerged after the 2001 crisis.

Although PE experiences have not been connected to CP and had barely gained visibility in Europe, they both share key points with CP; both are based on the premise that an education for democracy must be democratically organised, and therefore promote the active participation of civil society through grassroot democracy and participatory citizenship models.

Thus, EduCommon would bring out mutual synergies: CP would strengthen the theoretical framework of PE, whilst PE would provide CP with experiences to follow.

To set up this intercultural dialogue, the fellow will bring to Argentina her previous knowledge on CP, whilst will return to Europe analytical knowledge on the current PE experiences.

Lessons generated will be of wider relevance for the European education governance, with transferable outcomes to other contexts.