To the framework of social control and learning, therefore, I want to add a taxonomy of action, upon which the educator can draw in the design and provision of learning, and which she or he can offer to the learners. Conventional action enables us to participate directly and peaceably in the affairs of our community, society and state. It involves activities such as voting, taking part in election campaigns as party members or campaign workers, entering into communal activity, making contact with politicians and officials through letter-writing, email, phone and meetings, organising petitions and lobbying, and engaging in consumer boycotts, lawful demonstrations and lawful strikes. In this kind of action the people involved are intent on changing policy and procedures within the existing structures, and not with altering the structures themselves. Middle-class people might take to the streets to protest government changes to the public education system, but they are not challenging the existing order, of which in many other respects they are a part.
Confrontational action is what it says.
It takes on those in control more openly and directly, and is more in your face . It will involve action designed to disrupt, such as invading a meeting, blockading a road, holding demonstrations which have not been coordinated with the police and the local council, occupying buildings, and going ahead with a strike that has been decreed unlawful by the authorities. So environmental activists, for example, will picket a uranium mine, block an underwater outlet from a chemical works, and dump waste outside a company headquarters. In many countries people involved in confrontational action tread a fine line between action which will result in prosecution and action which, although technically illegal, will not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Activists may occupy a building not knowing whether the police will arrest or simply eject them.