240064 VO Education and International Development (2022W)

In the context of the liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s in the Global South, education was seen as an effective instrument for liberation from domination and for building independent and socially just societies. It was supposed to enable people to self-determine and autonomously shape their own lives. The narrative of emancipatory education may sound like a fairy tale - and perhaps this concept was only a fairy tale, which was very quickly caught up by political and historical developments wherever it tried to unfold.
This lecture series addresses the question of what has become of the idea of emancipatory education. It is all too obvious that it has little appeal today. Discussions on education policy, whether at the national, regional or global level, are guided by completely different normative guidelines and dominated by the guiding principle of competitiveness. Emancipatory education was also highly normative, but its norm was the liberation narrative, drawing on Kant, Hegel, Marx, and, in the South, pre-colonial approaches to education. From the 1960s until the 1980s, this emancipatory approach was considered the starting point of any debate on education in development policy. Some concrete educational policies also tried to build on it.
In the context of the lecture series, therefore, after an introduction to theoretical foundations of education and liberation, a whole series of case studies from the history of the Third World and the Global South will be presented and critically discussed. Of particular interest here are those initiatives in which attempts have been made in countries of the periphery to forge an independent path of educational policy.
Examples discussed include the "Education for Self-Reliance" concept for auto-centered development in Tanzania, as well as socialist attempts in Asia (China, Vietnam,...) For Latin America, the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 is considered a beacon, as is that in Sandinista Nicaragua in the 1980s. This was followed up from 2000, when literacy campaigns were again launched in several Latin American countries under the slogan "Yo sí puedo!" ("Yes, I can!") were launched. Within the framework of the Latin American regional alliance ALBA-TCP, interregional educational cooperation also received widespread attention: With the support of Cuba and Venezuela, the "Yo sí puedo!" campaign was able to eliminate illiteracy in Bolivia, according to the government.
In addition to Paulo Freire, Julius Nyerere and bell hooks, European theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Pierre Bourdieu are also points of reference for this critical debate on education in the Global South. Paulo Freire became known through his book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", which has been translated into numerous languages. He advocates education as a practice of freedom. Julius Nyerere was a teacher, leader of the independence movement and first president of the independent Republic of Tanzania. His concept of "education for self-reliance" sees education as a key tool to make autonomous and socialist development possible in Tanzania. The African-American literary scholar bell hooks has subjected Paulo Freire to a feminist re-reading and is considered an advocate of feminist and anti-racist approaches.

Objectives:
Building on the theoretical approaches of Paulo Freire and others, this course aims to provide insights into the critical education debate and discuss historical case studies in which critical educational practice has unfolded. This is intended to strengthen the ability to critically, reflectively, yet constructively frame and contribute to educational debates.

Methods:
Lectures by the course instructor and individual guest speakers, supplemented by references to the reading of original texts and videos with contributions by the theorists discussed.