Popular Economics Education

Popular Economics Education

We believe that economics education needs to reach thousands of people in religious congregations, unions, neighborhood groups and business associations.

We've got a special knack for transforming dry economic statistics into memorable learning experiences that connect with people's lives and lead to action. To multiply our efforts, UFE also trains and supports a national network of volunteer workshop leaders.

In addition to charts, mini-presentations, and interactive games, we employ a number of popular education techniques and methods in our workshops.

What is Popular Education?

Popular education is a non-traditional method of education. Primarily aimed toward adults, it is more democratic and cooperative than traditional classroom-type education methods, which are based on lectures and writings by experts. Popular education is also openly political, and popular educators see the learners as potentially powerful people who can change the social conditions that surround them. With popular education, ordinary people define their own problems and apply the lessons of past political successes and failures to their own situation.

The popular education process begins by thinking and talking with a group of others about the events that have occurred in their own lives. With the guidance of a popular educator, participants identify ways to solve the problems confronting them. In this model, the emphasis shifts from lecture to problem-posing, and the content, previously removed from the learners' experience, becomes more relevant to the group.

Why Popular Education is So Important

Our emphasis on incorporating popular education methods in economic justice organizing and movement building comes out of a clear realization of the necessity of consciousness-raising to build a successful democratic social movement.

"... we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered... America, the richest, most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values."
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (Riverside Church, 1968)

The way we raise consciousness about the distribution of income, wealth, and power has to reflect the values of the just society we hope to build.