Learning Community: Popular Education and Homeless Women

In this essay, I present the voices of homeless women to illustrate the empowering impact of popular education on their lives. Popular education is a methodology of teaching and learning through dialogue that directly links curriculum content to people's lived experience and that inspires political action (Beder, 1996; Freire, 1985, 1990; Williams, 1996). On the basis of 5 years of ethnographic research in a shelter-based popular-education program, I describe how popular education approaches inspired a sense of community among a group of 50 homeless women of color. I also examine some of the barriers to literacy faced by women who returned to school during a time of crisis. I argue that in order to address the social injustices that oppress poor women, we should invest more in popular-education programs for women. In 2001, 54% of participants in the adult education and literacy system (AELS) were women (Murphy, 2003, p. 5). Many of the homeless women I met initially blamed themselves (and other individuals) for their poverty-related problems, but popular education helped them understand and address the root causes of their problems. According to Clover, Folien, and Hall (1998), "Feminist popular education seeks to understand and challenge the processes, functions, as well as structures which are responsible for particular social and gender inequalities" (p. 12). In my research, I observed how the women's participation in popular education enabled other positive changes in their lives (beyond the acquisition of basic literacy skills). The women engaged in healthier lifestyles, invested more in their children's education, improved their socioeconomic status, and increased their civic participation. Furthermore, the popular-education program at the Family Shelter addressed the women's material needs: It provided housing and legal advocacy, shelter, a food pantry, child care, health care, and other social services that supported the women's personal and community goals. Popular Education at the Family Shelter When I first visited the Family Shelter's site-based popular-education program, I met a group of homeless mothers who said they were returning to school to improve their economic opportunities and to provide a better life for their children. I had a personal interest in their experiences-my sister had dropped out of high school and had recently obtained her general equivalency diploma (GED). I was inspired by my sister's transformation, for I saw how her return to school had enabled other positive changes in her life. For this reason, I was drawn to the women at the Family Shelter and I sought to learn more about them. The fact that the women were homeless and were members of racial/ethnic minorities further stimulated me to question the relationships between social inequalities, illiteracy, and poverty. Many of the women had dropped out of school and some had no formal schooling experiences at all, so I wondered what social forces had limited their potential. In addition, I wished to know why they believed so strongly that education would improve their lives and increase their social mobility. I was impressed most by the women's positive attitude and determined belief in the life-changing power of education. For example, Delila explained how she was "desperate" to return to school: "Something would have happened if I didn't find a school. Do you know I was so desperate? It's like you have an addiction or something. You know, how you want it? If you don't get it, you're gonna die? That's how I felt about school. " Another student, Renata, said that she wanted to be a "role model" for her kids: "I decided to go back to school so I could be a good role model for my kids. And I say that because how can I teach them something or tell them something I don't know? How can I tell my kids to go to or finish school if I didn't? " The women also returned to school because they believed that getting the GED would increase access to decent jobs, allow them to get off of welfare, or enable them to enroll in a good job-training program or college. …