ABSTRACT
Liberal adult education may be defined in three ways: by the content: social, economic and political studies; the arts and humanities; and scientific studies accessible to the non-specialist; by the purpose: education for intellectual development and effective social action; or by the process: the pursuit of thoroughness and objectivity through the critical analysis of freely expressed arguments. Popular adult education can play a very important role in developing spontaneous resistance into class-conscious social movements, and in consolidating the organisations thus formed. In any rural society there is a series of processes, mechanisms and relations of production, socialisation, accumulation and the reproduction of knowledge. Peasant education is determined and created outside the rural community. Popular education has an explicit political connotation. This may be attributed to the fact that such a concept is used in traditional democratic societies but mostly under authoritarian regimes in most of the countries in the continent.
