Paulo Freire, the inea and the education of youths and adults in Mexico

Abstract

This article reviews the visit carried out by Paulo Freire at the National Institute for Adult Education (Instituto Nacional para la Educación de Adultos, inea) in Mexico-City in 1983. The purpose is to contextualize this visit and understand which were then the prevailing questions and challenges of youth and adult education and what they still are nowadays. Starting from the observations that Freire expres- sed during its visit the author approaches central issues in the debate about youth and adult education, such as the choice for self-learning and social solidarity, the work based on tutorship and the goals in youth and adult education. The analysis about those subjects starts from Paulo Freire’s biography and his writings and from a whole of materials gathered during the research stay the author carried out in Mexi- co City, Chiapas, Puebla and San Luis Potosí between 2014 and 2015. More than 150 adults and youthtook part in this research and more than 50 members of the academic staff with coordination, training,didactic material production or tutorship responsibilities. The whole allowed to establish numberless connections between Freire’s way of thinking, popular education, the public policies for adult and youth education in Mexico and in other countries of Latin America and the current challenges for materiali- zing the adult and youth education within the National Institute for Adult Education.