Popular Adult Education: The Bolivian Experience.

Overview & Synopsis

A discussion paper on popular adult non-formal education in rural Bolivia, based on four months of 1982 fieldwork, focuses on the nature of popular education and its meaning in a contemporary Bolivian context, program methods and operational strategies employed, outcomes and impacts on peasant participants (many of them Indians), and problems and potentialities arising from efforts at popular education. The paper combines description and analysis, is illustrated with many photographs and drawings, and is designed to encourage debate over the role of adult education in social change in developing and developed countries. A section on conceptual framework defines the main concepts and discusses perspectives on education and development. An historical overview of Bolivian society is provided, as well as discussions of the growth of popular education and the shortcomings of rural formal education. Characteristics, major orientations, and strategies of Bolivian popular education institutions are summarized, followed by a section on methodologies and processes used in the delivery of popular education programs. Case studies of 10 innovative popular education programs are presented. A section on issues in Bolivian popular education discusses consciousness-raising education and social change, and concerns about evaluation and impact assessment. The concluding section covers possibilities in Bolivian popular education and constraints affecting it. (MH)