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Abstract
Popular education, by which is meant adult education within and in support of radical social movements, has become a major topic in academic adult education in recent times. This paper criticises the lack of attention paid in most of this writing to the history, theory and practice of revolutionary parties in the communist and socialist tradition. Through an exploration of the concept of the ‘party line’, it is argued that this neglect has led to a one-sided view of the relationship between education and action, a view which must be overcome for popular education to become an effective force for socialist transformation.
Acknowledgements
The basic ideas on this paper were originally presented to a workshop at the PEN Conference in Braga, Portugal in 2004. Their substantial development since then owes much to my involvement since 2004 with the popular education movement in Timor-Leste, together with my partner and colleague, Deborah Durnan; and to my on-going correspondence with other PEN members. Substantial revisions were also made in response to comments from two anonymous reviewers and the journal editors.