ABSTRACT
[…] For more than 15 years I had been accumulating experiences in the field of adult education, in urban and rural proletarian and subproletarian areas. Urban dwellers showed a surprising interest in education, associated directly to the transitivity of their consciousness; the inverse was true in rural areas. (Today, in some areas, that situation is already changing.) I had experimented with — and abandoned — various methods and processes of communication. Never, however, had I abandoned the conviction that only by working with the people could I achieve anything authentic on their behalf. Never had I believed that the democratization of culture meant either its vulgarization or simply passing on to the people prescriptions formulated in the teacher’s office. I agreed with Mannheim that ‘as democratic processes become widespread, it becomes more and more difficult to permit the masses to remain in a state of ignorance.’ 1 Mannheim would not restrict his definition of ignorance to illiteracy, but would include the masses’ lack of experience at participating and intervening in the historical process.
