Educação popular e infância: princípios, concepções e práticas educativas

The present text discusses the relation between Popular Education and childhood, as social praxis, experienced by popular, determined by reality in a historical perspective. It was tried to seize them as social and historical constructs which take place in objective and subjective fields. This sense, it sought to problematize issues such as rights, citizenship and participation from the experience of Teenagers and Children Movement (MAC). Between what is proclaimed and what is made effective, this study covered legal sources (Statutes, Declarations), official documents of the movement, as well as listened to the subjects (children and adults) involved in the experience. The aims was to analyze the conceptions, principles and practices of popular education lived by children and adults from the socio-political-educational project of MAC, and to investigate how these values contribute to the recognition of the child as a subject of rights in the context of Popular Education This work summarizes its analysis by the making explicit that the exercise of construction of a critical education, especially of a popular education, must be permanently revisited. Although MAC is based on the principles of Popular Education, both this experience and others that are similarly called so must reconsider the status of childhood as a condition for the recognition of the child as a subject who has a voice and participation. This implies revisiting the place of the adult in their relationship with the child, from a dialogical, collaborative and political perspective. This presupposes a rupture with practices of a decorative participation towards a protagonist participation.