A non-exhaustive overview of popular education, its history and its values, at a time when the City of Marseille is committed to establishing it as a founding pillar of the development of young Marseille residents.
Popular education in a few words
Table of Contents
The concept of popular education has its origins at the end of the 19th century in a French society that was still fiercely unequal despite the foundation of principles inherited from the French Revolution. It can be defined as uan educational approach aimed at contributing to the emancipation of individuals and their autonomy to transform society.
The revolutions of 1830, 1848 and 1871 caused decisive turning points. Three currents emerged, each producing a form of popular education in their own way: a secular republican current, a social Christian current, and a worker and revolutionary current.
Throughout the 20th century, the notion of popular education evolved, became institutionalized, and took on various political colors.
In 1871, the Paris Commune decreed several reforms, including free secular education, as well as vocational education provided by the workers themselves.
In our city, it is the most radical Freemasons who develop, through teaching, a real policy of mutual aid, which includes the range of opponents of Napoleon III. These are the beginnings of a real desire for social policy: see our article on the Commune of Marseille on this subject.
A French movement developed throughout the country via the associations, mutuals and cooperatives created in the years 1810-1820. The repression of the Commune destroyed this movement, it was not until 1880 that it was fully reborn, becoming a powerful force in political life. In the 1890s, the labor exchanges created by municipalities to regulate the job market are invested by revolutionary trade unionists. The stock exchanges are equipped with support services, libraries, evening classes.
Social Christianity, for its part, is a movement bringing together sons of notables and young workers and peasants. It is structured more around the fight against misery and poverty.
The Thirty Glorious Years and May 68
The idea of pedagogy of democracy is evolving towards a concept of socio-cultural animation, linked to leisure. Recognition of the State entails the creation of rights and the allocation of resources. So, the creation of works councils (1946), the law on the right to continuing professional training (1971) or even the construction of infrastructure such as MJC (House of Youth and Culture).
At the end of the 1960s, a strong desire for self-management emerged, accompanied by the desire to rethink popular education as a powerful lever for transforming society. Thus, on May 25, 1968, the directors of the Maisons de la culture published the Villeurbanne declaration which stipulated: “ Any cultural effort can only appear vain to us as long as it does not expressly aim to be an enterprise of politicization: that is to say, to tirelessly invent, for the benefit of this non-public, opportunities to politicize itself. » Politicize here being “politics” in its broader sense, that of civility concerning everything relating to the exercise of power, the organization of society, the sense of the collective…
And today?
In recent years, sociology has developed the concept of “capability”, in the sense of increasing each person’s capabilities within the framework of a caring approach that promotes self-confidence. We have understood that the “Marxist” approach has disappeared in favor of a dimension advocating the ability of citizens to act on their living conditions, their social context, to reclaim their daily lives by being able to decide for themselves. In this way they can transform the collective.
A lever for emancipation, an educational policy in its own right, avenues for reflection to understand how everyone can flourish and make their contribution to inventing a fairer, more egalitarian society: this is what popular education is.
Citizens of tomorrow at Friche Belle de Mai in 2025 – Photos: © Ryan Layechi – City of Marseille
