Non-formal education: history and criticism of a social form^*

Abstract

This article presents a research that considered as a hypothesis a critical interpretation of the history of non-formal education in Brazil. Here we address its emergence linked to a conservative project to mitigate the strength of popular education during the period of the military dictatorship. The investigation started from such indications and from a methodological proposal of political sociology that refers to the study of hegemonic social forms to search for links of such process in the history of non-formal education. The following presentation discusses the results of an investigation based on bibliographic and documental research. On the one hand, this process is specified by the replacement of adult education programs developed in the early 1960s, amid popular culture movements, which had Paulo Freire as a reference, by the institution of Mobral (Brazilian Movement of Literation). On the other hand, the examination of UNESCO’s documents, especially from the texts of Philip Coombs, considered the pioneer in the use of the term non-formal education, as a recommendation to overcoming a crisis in education. In both movements, national and international, it is possible to identify the genesis of this social form configured by the association between the State, private entities, and civil society. This form changes the agents and purposes of an education aimed at the popular classes. The prevalence of this social form appears at other key moments in the history of non-formal education, especially in the 1990s, with the growth of the third sector, NGOs and business foundations and institutes.

Non-formal education; Popular education; History; Hegemony; Social form