240064 VO Education for Self-Determination (2023W)

Content:
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 that was very quickly caught up by political and historical developments wherever it tried to unfold.
This lecture series will discuss the idea of emancipatory education and what has become of it. It is all too obvious that it has little appeal today. Discussions on education policy, whether at national, regional or global level, are guided by completely different normative guidelines such as the principle of competitiveness. Emancipatory education was also highly normative, but its norm was the liberation narrative, drawing on Kant, Hegel, Marx and, in the Global South, pre-colonial approaches to education. From the 1960s until the 1980s, this approach was considered the starting point of any debate on education in development policy discussions, in many places also in the countries of the Global South itself - and some concrete education policies also tried to build on it.
In the context of the lecture series, after an introduction to theoretical foundations of education and liberation, a whole series of case studies from the history of the (emancipatory) Third World and the Global South will therefore be presented and critically discussed. Of particular interest here are those initiatives in which attempts were made in countries of the periphery to follow an independent path of educational policy.
The examples discussed include the concept of "Education for Self-Reliance" for an autonomous development in Tanzania as well as socialist attempts in Asia, especially in China. 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 onwards, when literacy campaigns were launched again in several Latin American countries under the motto "Yo sí puedo! ("Yes, I can").
In addition to Paulo Freire, Julius Nyerere and Bell Hooks, European theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Pierre Bourdieu are reference points 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 central instrument 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, the course aims to provide an insight into the critical education debate and to discuss historical case studies in which critical educational practice was developed. This should strengthen the ability to critically, reflectively and yet constructively classify and help shape educational debates.

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