THE PROBLEM TREE

This exercise is part of a much broader approach to learning termed Popular Education. Popular Education is more than a new 'fad' approach to teaching, it is a means to an end; the empowerment of powerless groups through their own experience, by becoming conscious of, and working to change their own social conditions. In Popular Education the participants are both educators and learners, not teachers and students.

Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, pioneered these techniques in Brazil and the concept has now spread to many other parts of the world.

The techniques of 'education for liberation' were born in response to the specific forms of oppression that poor people in that country face in their daily lives. However, the techniques are very adaptable and can be utilised by, for instance, people in this country to evaluate the forces that impact on their daily lives and create problems for them in seeking to improve their lot.

In Brazil, one of the most active movements in this process was Catholic Action, made up mainly of Catholic University students. They devised a uniquely efficient method of analysis to understand their reality.

Their method was based on three steps:

Ver, TO SEE,

Julgar, TO JUDGE, and

Agir, TO ACT.

Community broadcaster's who see part of their remit as being 'educative' in the broadest sense, could usefully apply these concepts, both within the station training modules, and through certain broadcast material.

The objective of the learning process is to liberate the participants from the social pressures and internalised ideas that hold them passive in conditions of oppression, to enable them to change their perceptions of reality, and to encourage them to work collectively to effect changes in the perceived situation.

Popular Education uses Participatory Learning tools and stresses going to the roots of the issue, analysing the particular historical circumstances of a given situation and devising local solutions. This approach has developed a uniquely efficient method of analysis to understand reality, and action to transform this reality. This method is based on three steps;

The problems facing a community are known, in Popular Education terms, as the generative themes. And they can usefully be represented in various codes, such as drawings, puppet skits, audio and video recordings or role-play, for example. And the interactive dynamic employed to fully engage the participant's is Participatory Learning.

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The first principle of Popular Education is the need to democratise power relationships in society.
Participatory Learning achieves this by creating a situation where the facilitator and learners collaborate in the acquisition of knowledge and skills.
Popular Education is a political process in which the projects, strategies and tactics used are produced collectively by the participants themselves, and are designed to encourage progressive activism.
Participatory Learning facilitates this by a process that creates new realities and empowers the participants to engage in collective, developmental actions.

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The purpose of Popular Education is to empower the participants. This is achieved through a system that Freire described as 'praxis': practice and reflection. Empowerment therefore consists of awareness, self-recognition, and action, achieved through a range of Participatory Learning methods, one of which is the 'Problem Tree'.