A rubric  for Popular Education Movements that help us investigate the conflicts and tendancies from within.

Ultra-red

Many of us in Ultra-red have taken much inspiration from Freire's Education for Critical Consciousness (which covers the "generative words" phase of the thematic investigation) and Pedagogy of the Oppressed (which covers the "generative themes" phase of the thematic investigation). There is also the shorter essays in his Cultural Action For Freedom. But none of these are online resources. What IS online is a copy of Marx's own Worker's Inquiry(1880).

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Here is a very rough list of questions that could be asked about the practice of a popular education thematic investigation. Obviously, there are many resources for conceptualizing and developing such a process. But these could be some questions for getting that process started. Ultra-red offer these out of total humility, respect and in solidarity with the beautiful comrades there in New York.

1. How have you practically organized yourselves for existing day to day?

2. What forms of mutual teaching have you organized?

3. What have you learned through that teaching so far?

4. What questions have emerged in the group from the mutual teaching -- i.e. questions or limits to the group's understanding? Perhaps those questions or themes name points that the group holds in common or, very importantly, they could be points that mark differences or even contradictions within the group.

5. Has the group developed any sort of analyses of those questions or themes, even if provisional?

6. Have you been able to articulate any actions or long-term investigations to pursue those questions or themes?

7. What are the practical obstacles for the group conducting an investigation? What are the strategies for changing those obstacles?

8. What are the protocols that organize the direction and experimentation in the investigation? If there is more than one inquiry, do all of the investigations use the same protocols or is each inquiry developing their own?

9. According to your analysis, who are other specific political struggles that you want to learn from? What is the strategy for extending an invitation to those struggles to join an investigation with you?

10. How might others who are not able to join you physically practically participate in your investigations?