Rainforest Wonder

Alas, but i was supposed to be on a boat with J'net on our way to visit a remote native community she visits once every couple of weeks for her work. But the boat was too full and i was the expendable one. As i watched the boat surge off down the inlet i saw this wonder, which seemed a fitting consolation. The rainbow was actually a perfect arc across the entire sky and with the sun coming out for the first time in days, it felt like the world itself calling out, "look, see how wondrous is this land."

The Old Woman and the Pot

There was once an old woman who, one day, was feeling very sorry for herself. Her husband had recently died and she was also thinking of her many children, of whom two had also died. She thought about what a terrible thing it was to outlive your children. Many of her children still lived and she knew that she had lived a good, if hard, life. But her self-pity was strong and she felt doubly bad for this indulgence. She decided to go to the market and, there, perhaps lose herself in the bustle and noise of the crowd. Once in the market her spirits did begin to lift when she noticed a pot-seller's table and remembered that she needed a new pot. On the front of the table was a nice, shiny new pot the exact shape and size that she needed.

She asked the price and the potseller said, "For that pot, four kopeks."

Yes, thought the woman. It is a lovely new pot and too expensive. She looked over the table and, to one side, saw another pot, a little smaller but still good for her purposes. It looked old but it would do.

"For that pot, five kopeks," said the potseller.

The woman was surprised and said, "But I don't understand. How could that pot be more expensive than this nice new one? I don't mean to embarrass you but, that pot looks used."

"Ah!" said the potseller and he lifted his hand and struck the old pot hard with his finger. The pot sent a musical note into the market air that stopped all those around who heard it until the sound dissipated into the morning air. "You see, we who make pots know that you do not judge a pot by the way that it looks but by the note that it sings."

"Oh, yes," said the old woman, smiling. "I knew that. I just forgot it for a moment."

A Collection of Social Justice Mailing Lists

I've always been an avid reader of newsletters, magazines, journals and, of course, books. And the internet has multiplied beyond imagining the amount of text and image that can fill one's reading hours. Here's a few of the lists about social justice activism and popular education to which i am subscribed:

Social justice events, news and resources in Toronto:

• Centre for the Study of Education and Work at OISE
• This is an excellent source of information about labour education and scholarship.

• Rise Up! News and Events
• Compiled and published by long-time activist and educator Anna Willats, this is a very comprehensive listing of social justice and advocacy events in Toronto. To post an event, subscribe, or unsubscribe, just send a plain text message to awillats@sympatico.ca

• Toronto Social Forum
• Started by activists who were inspired by the Porto Alegre initiated World Social Forums, this list shares information and resources about social justice activism with a strong international focus.
  

• Incoming: The Newsletter of the Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy
• an excellent source of information about events, resources and jobs in the literacy community of Toronto

• Centre for Social Justice
• A Toronto-based research centre, their list promotes events and resources mostly in Toronto including campaigns with which they are associated.
  

• Ontario Council for International Cooperation e-bulletins
• OCIC is an umbrella group of NGOs working in international development. Their e-bulletin is an excellent source of information about member-related events, resources, jobs and more.

• Planning Action
• A group of activist planners, they've got a great list about planning related happenings, debates and more.
  

• Clay and Paper Theatre
• Clay and Paper is a Toronto-based puppet theatre troupe. They annually put on shows in Dufferin Grove Park and other spots around Toronto.
  

Beyond Toronto

• The Popular Education News
• An excellent newsletter, written and published by Larry Olds (long-time adult educator from Minneapolis) that features events and resources abut popular education - mostly in the US and Canada.
  

• COCo - The Centre for Community Organizing
  
• A Montreal-based non-profit that does training and community organizing.
  

• Voices Rising: The on-line magazine of The International Council for Adult Education
• Some useful info about international adult education.
  

• People and Planet Friendly:
• Canada's Gateway to environment, sustainability and conservation
  

• View from the Hill: Newsletter of the Highlander Research and Education Center
• Highlander has been doing social justice rabble rousing and education for over 70 years in Appalachia. A wonderful source of experience, resources and inspiration.
  

• COMM-ORG: The on-line conference on community organizing and development
• This is a terrific resource for community organizers - events, debates, papers, curricula and much more.
  

A New Season

I've been absorbed. Or perhaps i've been away on a cosmic jaunt. It sure feels that way when i notice that my last post to this blog was in July. It's been a wonderful summer and, as richly packed as it was, it also feels like i've merely blinked and months have passed. The autumnal equinox is behind us and we are well into the fall season of school and work and life. As some of you know, i am now married - having proposed to a beloved friend of 20 years, J'net August (now J'net Cavanagh), we did two wedding ceremonies this past summer, one in Port Alberni, BC and one on the Toronto Islands. Everything went wonderfully well and there are numerous good memories that have been shared widely amongst family and friends. However, little has changed in my day-to-day life as J'net and i continue to live on opposite sides of the country until next year. Alas. Such a modern relationship. I also have two step-children now as well and, having taken care of one of them this summer for two weeks and with all the frenzy (joyous though it was) of two weddings and with all the August preparatory work for teaching this Fall and, finally, getting started teaching, i am only now catching up to myself and attending to numerous deferred tasks - like blogging.

Kafka and Son - not to be missed!

I went to see Kafka and Son at the Toronto Fringe this afternoon and, having seen it in its original run well over a year ago, i was once again deeply moved by this gripping play. Alon Nashman’s performance makes me wonder about other one-person shows that have moved me and in which i've wondered whether i'm witnessing acting or channeling. I learned about Kafka's letter to his father through this play and, having struggled through most of Kafka's work over 20 years, i wish that i had known of this letter then. Though i'm not wure i wouldn't have gone for the easy psychological (Adlerian and reductionist) interpretation: tyrannical father leads to son who has to overcompensate, producing work that appears to be that of a genius but is really just a boy crying for his father's love and approval. Alon's acting out the words of the letter gives us a Kafka of remarkable complexity - humour, pathos, anger, regret, longing, humiliation - and the play pushes the story beyond the obvious psychological reductionism to the question of whether or not Kafka would have been the iconic Kafka we know without the father he describes. Kafka's work is not therapy writ large as some might have it. He was a participant in the discourses of his time which included surrealism, the relatively new practice of psychoanalysis, existentialism, Marxism and more. He also lived at a time when the 20th Century was young and still trying to sort out the shape of power (personal and political). He wrote the letter after World War I and i imagine that had a rather profound influence on him (he followed the letter with some of his most famous work: The Trial, The Castle, Amerika). His story The Metamorphosis remains one of the most influential tales i read as a teenager (written, interestingly, just prior to World War I).

Are we called into the life we live or are we pushed? Is it possible that Kafka “created” his father; did he need such a relationship to give us the works of genius that are still so frighteningly apt in our less-than-enlightened age of war, “terror”, baby-faced tyrants, shadowy economic hit men and persistently invisible machineries of power? I feel strongly that popular educators and social change activists need to include Kafka in their reading. We need to understand power better. I think there might be a tendency to apply Kafka to interpreting the formerly communist bloc countries while ignoring the relevance to Anglo-American culture except to misuse the adjective kafkaesque. When we wonder about media complicity in the run-up to Bush's war in Iraq and "against terror", when we wonder about Guantanamo and how the US would arrest one of their own soldiers (former US Army Muslim Chaplain James Yee for 76 days in solitary), when we wonder about the health care system in the US (as shown through Michael Moore's new film Sicko) and about those forces perpetually trying to privatize Canadian health care - some of the answer (or perhaps it's better to say, some of the questions) are to be found in Kafka's work.

If you're in Toronto you still have a few opportunities to see Kafka and Son - you can see the listings here. And the play goes on tour next week to Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Edmonton. It is a remarkable and memorable piece of theatre. Don't miss it!

Why? Why? Why? - A popular education reflection tool

I was recently asked by the Climate Crisis Coalition about an exercise i've been using for many years to do critical reflection. It's an old favourite of mine and its simplicity belies the profound effects it can have on people. I call it Why? Why? Why? and it consists of simply posing a simple question and pounding it with a series of "Why's". You can download an activity description here:

• Why? Why? Why? Activity Description (Word-50K)
• Why? Why? Why? Activity Description (PDF-47K)

And there's a sample form here: Why? Why? Why? Sample Form (Word-22K)

I like to call this exercise "popular education for our inner two-year-old" - something all parents will understand. I like to use this exercise to start an event as it gives people the chance to consider why they are involved in the work they do and, presumably, why they are participating in the event they are a part of.

If you use it please let me know how it goes and i'm happy to share more tips about how to use it.

This year's talk about Human Rights Education and Advocacy

Each year for the past three i've been invited to give a talk (along with Chrysogone Zougmore Secretary General of the Mouvement Burkinabé des Droits de l'Homme et des Peuples in Burkina Faso) on the relationship between human rights education and advocacy. I called this year's talk The Warp and the Weft and you can download a version of it here: http://www.web.net/~story/RC/warpandweft-2007handout.doc

Invisible Theatre to the power of 10

The Yes Men are up to their antics once again. This CBC story reports the latest (thanks, Matt). The Yes Men are merry pranksters who monkey-wrench corporate conference events by posing as official representatives of various corporate interests. This documentary chronicles some of their pranks. It's interesting to compare their work to invisible theatre, one of the methods of Theatre of the Oppressed developed by Augusto Boal (if you can read Portuguese check out Boal's organization in Rio: CTO-Rio and there's an english page here about international exchanges). Invisible Theatre is an interventionist form of theatre in which a group of actors stage and perform scenes that expose various forms of injustice. The goal is to provoke dialogue about oppression and, hopefully, contribute to resisting oppression if not promoting justice. The actors never reveal that it is theatre and so people who have witnessed/participated in the event would never know that they had been part of something that had been planned. The ethics of doing this are, to say the least, fuzzy - worth debating. Since first doing Theatre of the Oppressed in the mid 80s i have seen a consistently enthusiastic response on the part activists and educators that usually sounds like, "That's so cool. Let's DO IT!" This enthusiasm can eclipse the need for careful preparation including discussion of the why's and wherefore's of doing it. The Yes Men eventually expose what they have been doing so it's not exactly invisible theatre but it does share some elements in common up to the point they reveal themselves or get exposed. The curious thing is why people are suckered by them when they are presenting incredibly outlandish things as in one presentation where they advocate for slavery. But, having come across Confessions of an Economic Hit Man i can see that believing the Yes Men is actually not as hard as believeing the extent to which the forces of U.S. capitalist democracy are willing to go in manipulating other countries economies for the benefit of the U.S.

John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire

This episode of Democracy Now features an interview with John Perkins who wrote Confessions of an Economic Hitman. It's an illuminating, if discouraging, interview. It makes me wonder what chance the forces for social justice have when capitalism can function as Perkins describes:

We work many different ways, but perhaps the most common one is that we will identify a third world country that has resources our corporations covet, such as oil, and then we arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations. The money never actually goes to the country. It goes instead to US corporations, who build big infrastructure projects -- power grids, industrial parks, harbors, highways -- things that benefit a few very rich people but do not reach the poor at all. The poor aren’t connected to the power grids. They don’t have the skills to get jobs in industrial parks. But they and the whole country are left holding this huge debt, and it’s such a big bet that the country can't possibly repay it. So at some point in time, we economic hit men go back to the country and say, “Look, you know, you owe us a lot of money. You can't pay your debt, so you’ve got to give us a pound of flesh.”

Here's the Democracy Now interview with Perkins from November 2004.

A few things worth checking out

Culture Collective
A source of on-line videos, that Jacob of the Living Folklore says is "a place to cultivate dreams - a collection of stories and voices to inspire hope and to create a meaningful dialogue across cultures and generations." There's a blog, too.

International Summer Institute Lifelong Learning
Faculty of Education, University of Malta 18-19 September 2007 with Professors Peter Jarvis, Margaret Ledwith, Peter Mayo and Kenneth Wain. Click here for a PDF flyer describing the event.

The Popular Education News #49 - June-July 2007
Produced and distributed by Larry Olds from Minnesota this issue features reports from the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed conference that happened a few weeks ago.

Highlander’s 75th Anniversary Celebration Educational Institutes
On Friday, August 31, in celebration of its 75th Anniversary, Highlander will conduct day-long, single-topic trainings on the core methodologies that have been the backbone of Highlander’s ability to impact communities for the last 75 years. Choose from one of five core methodologies and spend an entire day with Highlander Staff and other nationally known leaders in their field. Topics of study include: Popular Education, Participatory Research, Cultural Organizing, Multilingual Capacity Building and Communications for Change.

Redesigning the Popular Education Class

As some of you know, i've been teaching a popular education class at the Faculty of Environmental Studies for the past several years. In 2001 and 2002 i co-taught it with Matt Adams of the Catalyst Centre. I then co-taught (in the Winter semestre of 2003) the new second part (focusing on practice) with Christine McKenzie who was a new member of Catalyst at that time (and, like myself a graduate of FES). And i've taught it solo for the past few years. And this coming Fall i'll co-teach it with Deborah Barndt who's been on faculty at FES since 1993 thereabouts. So, it's time to redesign the course. Here's the syllabus from this past season. And for those of you interested in the individual session designs you can download a Word document here (it's 451K) with 11 of the 12 sessions. It's a very popular course that has always attempted to give a critical survey of the field of popular education (broadly interpreted). You can get a sense of this from the syllabus and session designs.

Now, Deb and i are talking about reorienting the course. It will still be survey-like. But we're going to feature three frames of reference: contemporary Latin American popular education, postcolonialism and aboriginal ways of knowing. We're still sorting what the texts will be and, thus far, have agreed to the following:

• Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
• Colonialism/Postcolonialism by Ania Loomba
• Popular Education and Social Change in Latin America by Liam Kane
• Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision edited by Marie Battiste

And we're looking at choosing one of the following:

• We Real Cool:Black Men and Masculinity by bell hooks
• Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley

Tough choices. And i'd love to add more. There will be a selection of readings as well, albeit less than in the past since we'll be concentrating on a few texts for a change. Opinions on this course, our text choices and how you think popular education should be taught are most welcome.

Popular Education Bookshelf - 3 - Public Health

Popular Education and Public Health

This post is partly a sharing of some resources and partly a request. I've learned over the years that participatory research has made quite an impact on the health field. I'd like to learn more, especially where people are using popular education for public health work. I'm told that Nina Wallerstein at University of New Mexico is a leader in this field. And there's Denise Gastaldo who's edited a book of poems by immigrant women in Toronto (there's a PDF here). Then there's Women's Health in Women's Hands who have some good resources on-line such as Building Inclusive Communities Tips Tool (a PDF); Healthy Options for Women (a PDF and also available in French, Somali and Swahili) and others (see the resources page).

The Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition has some great resources as well. Check out Healthy Food, Healthy Community (a PDF) as well as others on their publications page.

i recall meeting Ron Labonté many years ago and have heard his name for years associated with a storytelling process and health education - they call it story/dialogue and you can find out more about it here.

There's an Australian site that has some interesting pieces on it here. And, specifically, they use a storyboard process that uses graphic images for health promotion - there's a PDF (12.8M) here.

And here's an interesting article from Asian Labour Update: Popular Education and the wWorker's Health and Safety Movement. It looks like they're doing something similar to the mapping work that Dorothy Wigmore has developed.

If you know of good popular health education resources, please let me know about them.

Work, Dignity and Social Change" Interactive Video Workshop

Check out this excellent video on the Unemployed Workers’ Movements of Argentina:

Work, Dignity and Social Change

I've been meaning to blog this for some time, but thought i would wait til i'd had a chance to watch it all again and share some choice quotes. Alas: tempus fugit. One of the participants of the popular education class that i teach at the Faculty of Environmental Studies (thanks, Gaby) shared some of this video as her class presentation and then used it as the basis for her contribution to our collective class project in which you'll find an activity description for using this video. I highly recommend this video as it has remarkably articulate interviews with people about their struggles that include using popular education. One of the things that i like about these interviews is that they address both the complexities and contradictions of community organizing (e.g. whether to take state money or not) and popular education (e.g. what happens when you try and do popular education to people?). It's worth the watch! The website also includes facilitators' guides and other handouts.

Popular Education Bookshelf - 2 - Participatory Evaluation

Popular Education and Participatory Evaluation

"Participatory" is a tricky keyword. And, though many people tend to think of popular education and participatory education as synonymous, this is a mistake. I would say that popular education always includes using so-called participatory methods and has, what you could call a participatory ethic. But participatory approaches are not necessarily popular education. The big difference, i would say, has to do with the radical critique of power that is a central feature of popular education. And, while there are certainly naive interpretations of popular education that ignore its radical elements, i think this is an unavoidable tendency and a necessary struggle. But "participatory" is a trickier matter. It is the sort of term that can mean all things to all people. But, when it comes to participatory research, participatory action research, participatory rural appraisal and participatory evaluation i think it important both to critique and to affirm the interconnections with popular education. But more on this will have to wait for a future post. Meanwhile, having recently been asked for resources on participatory evaluation i dug up some research i'd done some time ago. There are a handful of manuals on participatory evaluation that are well-worth working with. Though you can't depend on the manuals themselves to advocate for a popular education ethic and politic, there is a strong affinity. The approaches in these manuals are very adaptable to popular education contexts. Here they are:

• This one is from Health Canada (i've been quite surprised how much work has been done in the health sector on participatory research and participatory evaluation): Guide to Project Evaluation: A Participatory Approach
• Of all the UN agencies, the FAO has been remarkably consistent for many decades in developing and promoting participatory approaches: FAO's Community Toolbox
• Another UN approach: UNDP Manual
• And for another Canadian model, here's an IDRC publication: Knowledge Shared

Popular Education Bookshelf - 1 - Human Rights

Popular Education Human Rights Training Manuals

I know of three excellent sources of human rights education material: Equitas, the Human Rights Resource Center of the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center and The Council of Europe. Each if these organizations has numerous manuals and education resources and in each case you've gotta dig down into their websites to find things. And the Council of Europe website is a baffling maze. Within these manuals you'll find hundreds of education activities on human rights, of course, but they also include numerous group activities, energizers, games and more. All of this is easily adaptable to other educational contexts. So, here are links directly to a variety of manuals.

EQUITAS:

1. The International Human Rights Training Program 2006 - This is the manual of the annual training program Equitas has done for many years. It's a three-week course and this manual has been designed strongly based on a Freirian education model and with a very good participatory ethic. I've been a facilitator at this event and can vouch for the effectiveness of Equitas' pedagogy. On this page you'll find PDFs of both the facilitator and participant manuals in english and french. This page will no doubt be updated with the 2007 manual once this year's event (in June) has happened.
2. Training for Human Rights Trainers Book 1 (pdf) and Book 2 (pdf): both of these are excellent train-the-trainer resources and are also available in Russian on this page. In December in Nairobi, i facilitated a version of this program.
   
3. Equitas Manuals: Equitas has a good practice of developing and publishing manuals for the many types of trainings and consultations they do. This page has a wide variety of manuals.
   

HUMAN RIGHTS RESOURCE CENTER: There are numerous manuals on this site though they could do with some reorganization. You'll find nine of them (as html pages) here and there's an overview page here which will lead you to yet more resources. Most of these have been developed with primary and secondary school students in mind but all of them are adaptable to adult education situations as well. The Human Rights Education Handbook (#5 below) in particular is an excellent training manual for facilitating both human rights and many other educational processes. Here are direct links to nine of their education manuals:

1. Human Rights Here and Now
2. Economic & Social Justice and as pdf (446K)
   
3. Raising Children withg Roots, Rights & Responsibilities and as pdf (669K)
   
4. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Rights
5. The Human Rights Education Handbook and as pdf (852K)
   
6. Lifting the Spirits: Human Rights & Freedom of Religion or Belief and as pdf (1,874K)
   
7. The Beyond September 11 Project and as pdf (221K)
   
8. The Activist Handbook on Indigenous Peoples Human Rights (working draft)
   
9. Sustainable Economics Curriculum

THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE: I learned of these materials from a Catalyst Centre intern who came to work with us from the Czech Republic. Once again, these manuals contain numerous activities that, though developed for human rights work, are very adaptable to other education contexts. From a quick glance at their website i can see that there are an awful lot of resources here in multiple languages (it looks like the Council of Europe has a lot of money). But their website is byzantine - i found my way to these resources three different ways from Sunday. Here is an index page for something called Learning and Living Democracy - but the links to some of the youth manuals don't seem to be working anymore. And Compass has a number of links to manuals in multiple languages. Here's a link to a couple of their manuals:

1. COMPASS: A Manual on Human Rights Education with Young People and as pdf
   
2. Education Pack: ideas, resources, methods and activities for informal intercultural education with young people and adults and as pdf

Popular Education Bookshelf - 0

For some time now I've been trying to figure out a way both to frame and to share the many resources available (electronically and otherwise) for practicing, studying and otherwise using popular education. This blog is, in fact, one solution to this challenge. And, while i've shared some links to good resources i've wanted to be more systematic about it for some time. This is a tricky task, as popular education is something of a moving target. Which is part of its pedagogical/political appeal as a strategy of resisting unjust uses of power or, in a word, oppression. As such a strategy popular education is a dynamic interweaving of theory and practice or, in a word, praxis. Unfortunately there is a tendency to reduce popular education to a mere bag of tricks for better facilitating meetings and doing education work that is more fun and easy. This is a naive interpretation that, though useful at times, is often dangerously misleading.

The english word "popular" is, no doubt, partly to blame for this. In english the word "popular", in the first instance, means well and widely liked or appreciated. But in spanish, from which we adopt the phrase popular education, the word is more closely associated with its root meaning going back to the Latin populis meaning "the people." I, as well as many educators, have chosen to stick with the term popular education, despite its contradiction in english, as an act of solidarity with the context that created the term, i.e. latin american resistance to colonial, elitist and authoritarian education that had as one of its central objectives the maintenance of the massive inequality between rich and poor. (Paulo Freire, one of the most significant practitioner/philosophers of popular education, is one of the most notable personalities in this history of radical resistance to oppression.)

It has been a challenge to sustain a critical awareness of the radical (and even revolutionary) disposition of popular education as we have applied and developed it in Canada and the US during the past 30 years. And, while there are numerous reasons for this that are worth exploring, i want to call attention to one for the moment. And that is the tendency to interpret (and reduce) popular education to better group process. "Better", of course, means many things to many people but here i'm referring to things such as friendlier, more cooperative (even non-conflictual), democratic, anti-authoritarian, fun, engaging, participatory and more. And, while i believe that popular education does support such better group process, this is merely the tip of a very large and subversive iceberg. Popular education has no monopoly on better group process and a search of the literature will quickly find many very useful resources from the fields of sociology, cognitive psychology, conflict resolution studies, corporate (i.e. private sector) human resources training, leadership studies, community development and more. And i'm a firm believer in 'stealing' what's useful. I recommend excluding nothing from popular education practice without examining it first for potential adaptation and application. After all, all these fields that i mention have long-since been 'stealing' and adapting to suit their own purposes.

But, as i've said, popular education is more than mere techniques and bags of tricks, as desirable and necessary as these things are for educators, activists, trainers and others. Popular education is about changing the political, social, economic, cultural, personal, familial (and so on) worlds such that they are more just, more equitable, more peaceful (though peace does not mean eliminating conflict), more compassionate, more kind and even more competitive (if by competitive we eschew war in favour of that competition that is perhaps better termed contest and which is a necessary and vital form of engagement for play and growth and even intimacy).

Popular education is a praxis, a tricky and contested term. Its meaning starts with its greek root meaning, simply, practice. But the word comes to us across time and space having passed through the hands of numerous philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel to Marx and, finally, for our purposes, Freire. Popular education claims (as well as advocates) to unite theory and practice in a dynamic relationship: theory informing practice and practice informing theory. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (chapter 3) Freire argues that theory (he refers to "the word") without action is mere "verbalism" which is "idle chatter" and "alienated and alienating 'blah.'" He adds that action without reflection is "activism", "action for action's sake" and which "negates true praxis and makes dialogue impossible." (While i agree wholeheartedly with Freire's critique here, i prefer the term activistism to name what Freire means by activism.)

So, praxis, in Freire-speak can be summed up as action-reflection-action which is a cycle that goes on and on. I quite like the following definition from the Pakistan-based Sindh Education Foundation:

Praxis is a complex activity by which individuals create culture and society, and become critically conscious human beings. Praxis comprises a cycle of action-reflection-action which is central to liberatory education. Characteristics of praxis include self-determination (as opposed to coercion), intentionality (as opposed to reaction), creativity (as opposed to homogeneity), and rationality (as opposed to chance).

I have two critiques of this definition and one thing to add. My first critique is to bring Marx's take on praxis to bear on the notion of "individual": Marx's point about praxis is that it is social classes that are the actors in praxis and not individuals. My second critique has to do with the supremacy we grant rationality as a value and ethic but i'll save this for another day. More importantly for now, i think it is important to add something to what we mean by praxis. And this, perhaps, leads to a compromise between Marx's notion of social classes and the above definition's use of "individual." Along with action-reflection-action that changes the world i would add the process of critical self-reflection or, more accurately, a process of ethical self-transformation. While this might be implicit in some uses of the term praxis, i believe it central enough to require being made explicit. And my use of the term "self" does not refer to the individual (that supposed stand-alone, fragmented, separated-from-all idea) but rather the individual-in-relation (as in Martin Buber's notion of the I/Thou) or, to go back to the pre-17th Century definition of individual (see Raymond Williams' Keywords) which meant "indivisible."

Thus, popular education praxis is the activity of critically conscious, social actors (individuals, groups, social classes in relation with and amongst each other) that seeks to resist injustice, oppression, violence and tyranny and bring into existence a world with more love, more justice, more compassion or, as Grace Paley says in her poem The Responsibility of the Poet:

It is the poet's responsibility to speak truth to power as the
Quakers say
It is the poet's responsibility to learn the truth from the
powerless
It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no
freedom without justice and this means economic
justice and love justice

So, all this to say, that when i am sharing resources, some of those so-called techniques that we can fill our bags of tricks with or toolkits as some call it or skill-sets to use some contemporary jargon, there is an indispensable context of history, politics, theory and praxis the ignoring of and exclusion of which will lead at best to a contradictory practice of popular education and, at worst, hypocrisy and co-optation - popular education, with all its revolutionary potential would become its opposite and cease to be a force for liberation.

This blog post is the first of many "Bookshelf" entries, each of which will feature links (and perhaps annotations or even reviews though i make no promises) of resources that i think good for popular education praxis.

And because i love Grace Paley so much i'll give her the last word with the continuation of The Responsibility of the Poet:

It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the
original
and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems
It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it
on in the way story tellers decant the story of life
There is no freedom without fear and bravery. There is no
freedom unless
earth and air and water continue and children
also continue
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman to keep an eye on
this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be
listened to this time.

Georgia in Toronto: Darbazi

Over ten years ago a Georgian choir got started in Toronto. Called Darbazi, i had a few friends in the choir and saw a few of their first performances. It's been a while and i've heard occasional word of their performances and travels. I'm reminded of them now, not surprisingly, due to my recent travels. The Darbazi History page has a nice account of their origins as well as a couple of their trips to Georgia - lotsa nice photos as well. They also have a recordings page that has six mp3's on it - worth listening to:

From the CD:

• GURULI MAQRULI - This wedding song from the province of Guria features the intricate Gurian yodeling technique krimanchuli: "We are the bridal party! We are bright, and we are beautiful! Open the door to the wine cellar!"
• KEBADI - An example of Georgian Orthodox lithurgy from Guria. "From the rising of the sun..."
• AZAMAT - A dance song from the province of Abkhaseti. On this recording you will hear chonguri, two panduri and bani panduri.

From an recording for the CBC Amateur Choir Competition:

• TSMINDAO GHMERTO - Georgian Orthodox hymn from the province of Kartli. "Holy God, Holy Almighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy upon us."
• ADILOI - A horse riding song from the province of Imereti. "I am sitting on my black horse, well-seated in the saddle. I kicked the dust off my boots and rode to Tbilisi."

From an amateur minidisc recording of a 2003 Darbazi concert:

• IMERULI SATRPIALO - A love song from Imereti. "... woman, love of my heart, why don't you return my love? You set me on fire, my murderer, my close neighbour. Woman, I'll come to you, embrace you. The country's eyes are on you, Kristina with the beautiful eyes. Hear my prayer for you."

The Istanbul i didn't get to see

As i flew back to Canada from Georgia, my co-worker from Kazakhstan (and very skilled facilitator named Tanya) flew home to Almaty through Istanbul - a circuitous route, but she got to spend the day in that most ancient of cities. Ahhh... perhaps someday i'll get to see Istanbul firsthand. Meanwhile Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul is on my reading list. This photo is one of the images Tanya sent me from her day there - the beach along the Sea of Marmara. (Thanks, Tanya!)

So, just what the heck was i doing in Georgia?

Now that i'm home i actually have time to think about the week i've just spent in Georgia. I came home to a week of catching up which has slowed down my blogging. So it goes.

The meeting, Combating Violence Against Women in the South Caucasus, was organized and facilitated by Equitas-International Centre for Human Rights Education, a human rights education organization based in Montreal who do an annual human rights training program (IHRTP) and who have excellent human rights educational materials. My role was primarily to support the lead facilitator, a highly skilled woman (Tanya) from Almaty, Kazakhstan (and alumnus of the IHRTP) and the Equitas programme officer. It was a rare opportunity for me simply to observe facilitation in action. And Tanya was great.

Now, for the most part, i remain quite ignorant about the region i was just visiting - the southern Caucasus, in this case referring to Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. The meeting in Tbilisi involved representatives from a number of women's and human rights organizations who convened to share stories, explore common ground (for possible collaboration/coalition), and meet with and learn from the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women (so they could take better advantage of the support that the UN provides).

The groups included: from Georgia: Georgia Young Lawyers Association (GYLA, the local host of the meetings, their english site here), Anti-Violence Network of Georgia, Sakhli, Women's club "Peoni", Women's Center, Union of Azerbaijani Women of Georgia, Women Information Centre, People's Harmonious Development Society, Saphari. From Armenia: NGO Center - Civil Society Development Organization, Women's Rights Center, Hope and Help, Ajakits, Armenian Charitas, Society Without Violence. And from Azerbaijan: Yuva Center, Baku Association of Azerbaijan Women, Clear World HR GO.

Given how little i know of the region it was hard for me to imagine what these womens groups had to contend with on a daily basis. One of the common issues frequently referred to was trafficking - not something we hear a lot about in Canada (though there was an interesting TV drama about it last year - i can't remember if it was CBC or CTV, but i found it compelling). Working in multiple languages (with Russian-English translation) and dealing with the post-Soviet realities of these relatively new states. One fascinating consequence of this post-Soviet time is that the commonality of russian language is lessening. Anyone over 30 speaks russian, but this is not the case for the under-30, many of whom are learning english. And the presence of english is everywhere in Tbilisi.

I was very impressed to meet Professor Yakin Ertürk, a Turkish sociologist at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Professor Ertürk told me of her recent report on the standard of due diligence in which she articulates a notion of "cultural negotiation" that i found quite compelling. In her report she writes:

At the community and family level, the human rights discourse needs to be complemented by an approach based on “cultural negotiation”. Such an approach complements the empowerment approach discussed above, in that it allows the root causes of violence to be confronted and raises awareness of the oppressive nature of certain practices pursued in the name of culture. This requires, (a) drawing on positive elements within culture to demystify the oppressive elements of culture-based discourses; (b) demonstrating that culture is not an immutable and homogenous entity; and (c) identifying and contesting the legitimacy of those who monopolize the right to speak on behalf of culture and religion. In this context, hegemonic interpretations of culture must be challenged by uncovering the power dynamics that underlie these. The process of cultural negotiation through campaigns, information and media can become an important counter-discourse for the transformation of discriminatory values, institutions and power structures.

We only had the briefest of conversations about this over dinner - but i am anxious to learn more about this notion which seems to hold much promise for our so so complicated post-colonial world where we seem to swing back and forth from western hegemony (as the new global common sense) to the cultural relativism of live-and-let-live which all too easily leads to fatal inaction.

The entire week spent in Tbilisi has left a strong impression on me and it has also left me with many thoughts to ponder.

Another Tbilisi Chruch

I thought Quebec had a lot of churches. Quebec's got nothing on Tbilisi. This is the church on the mountain overlooking the city centre. A nice walk in the early morning.