A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneration: Between educational practice and political action: Social Education in dual militancy By XESTA ORGANIZACIÓN ANARQUISTA GALEGA (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Writing from Social Education is writing from a situated place. We do 
not speak from a supposed technical neutrality or from an aseptic 
distance from reality. Social Pedagogy-Education (PES from now on) is 
born, works and breathes in concrete contexts, crossed by inequalities, 
power relations, conflicts, collective pains and also by powers of 
transformation. Therefore, those who educate socially do not occupy a 
neutral place: they exercise an ethical and political position, just 
like those who act as militants. Even when they do not declare 
themselves as such, they are already intervening in a social reality and 
contributing, in some way, to reproducing or transforming it.

I also write from another place: the academic and researcher. Pedagogy 
and PES are not only exercised, they are also thought about, analyzed, 
discussed and theoretically constructed. My professional practice, often 
unpaid but always deeply political, places me in a hybrid space: between 
intervention and research, between territory and theory, between vital 
commitment and intellectual exercise. Today I write from here, from 
where the analysis that follows is formulated: not only to describe what 
already exists, but to open questions, illuminate potentialities and 
think together about how PES can dialogue with dual militancy to 
strengthen emancipatory, communitarian and transformative processes.

Table of Contents: 1) A grounded definition of Pedagogy-Social Education 
2) Paths found with dual militancy 3) Not everything that transforms is 
gold 4) Potentialities of this transdisciplinary work 5) As a projection

1) A grounded definition of Pedagogy-Social Education

Sometimes, even within the profession itself, we are unable to clearly 
define what PES is. Not because it is empty, but precisely because it is 
full: of diverse practices, multiple contexts, theoretical approaches 
and life experiences. Social pedagogy does not fit into a simple 
definition because it is not just an academic discipline or just a 
professional practice; it is, above all, a way of looking at and 
accompanying the social world.

A teacher once told me that social pedagogy is a fascination with the 
growth of others. We can hear that it is the education that happens 
outside of school, on corners, in social centers, in associations, in 
neighborhoods, in informal spaces, in bodies that do not fit and in 
lives that have never been considered central. It is the education of 
the margins, of non-normativity, of difference and otherness.

But it is not just a kind practice of light: it is an ethical and 
political practice. PES accompanies processes of emancipation, not to 
direct or supervise, but to facilitate that people and communities can 
exercise rights, build autonomy, organize themselves and transform the 
living conditions that they experience. It works from everyday life, not 
from closed pedagogical laboratories or from strictly institutional 
educational spaces.

Its epistemology starts from the bond. Educating, for PES, is 
fundamentally about building transformative relationships. There is no 
education without encounter, without trust, without mutual recognition, 
without shared creation of meaning. And, at the same time, PES is not 
limited to accompanying: it also interrogates. It can have a critical 
function that questions normalizations, denounces inequalities, points 
out oppressive logics and opens spaces to imagine other ways of living. 
In this framework, PES understands the community not only as an 
emotional space of belonging, but also as a space of rights, of shared 
responsibility, of politicization of the everyday. Here the link with 
political organization is direct: if the community is a space of rights, 
it is a space of power, of vindication and of collective action.

Paths found with dual militancy
Therefore, it should not be surprising that in our political 
organizations, especially those that are committed to dual models of 
militancy and transformation, there are social educators, free-time 
monitors, social integrators, socio-cultural animators, community 
mediators, teachers and other professionals in socio-community services 
who are politically involved (which I will include in this article under 
the umbrella of Social Pedagogy-Education). They not only provide 
technical tools (mediation, dynamization, strategic planning, 
participatory methodologies, etc.), but also ethics and a concrete 
proposal. They provide knowledge that cannot be improvised: knowing how 
to organize without commanding, caring without paternalizing, educating 
without domesticating, accompanying without replacing. PES, understood 
in this way, becomes a key that opens the possibility of thinking about 
militancy not only as a combative action, but also as a collective, 
sustained and conscious socio-educational process.

When we put PES into dialogue with militancy - and, in particular, with 
dual militancy - we discover that they are not two alien worlds, but 
deeply related practices, which share languages, horizons and ways of 
doing things. Both seek, in some way, to hegemonize ideas, not to impose 
them, but in a Gramscian sense of constructing shared meanings, 
frameworks of interpretation and ways of understanding the world that 
allow us to transform it. And for this, it is not enough to "inform": we 
must educate for these ideas, that is, create processes that make it 
possible for people to understand them, to critically internalize them 
and to put them into practice.

Here comes a central coincidence: both transformative militancy and PES 
work through dialogical and maieutic processes, in which knowledge is 
not transmitted as a closed truth, but is collectively constructed from 
experience, shared reflection and debate. This is a clearly Freirean 
heritage: awareness-raising does not consist of "opening the eyes" of 
those who do not see, but in creating conditions for the subjects 
themselves to explain, analyze and politicize their reality. They 
therefore share an ethic of dialogue, of shared speech and of mutual 
learning.

Another key similarity is in horizontality. The social educator does not 
place herself above the community, just as the activist should not place 
herself above the collective. Both practices are placed alongside other 
people: they accompany, propose, facilitate processes, but do not 
replace or unilaterally direct. PES works intensively on community care, 
conflict resolution, the sustainability of bonds, social cohesion and 
mutual support. Activism, when it thinks of itself in collective and 
non-heroic terms, also speaks of coexistence, companionship, mutual 
support and emotional management. Both share the same commitment: it is 
not just about caring for individuals, but about caring for collective 
coexistence, making possible organizations that last, that do not break, 
that learn to manage their own wounds. Thus, there is also a profound 
coincidence in respect for collective agreements and personal 
trajectories: recognizing that processes are slow, that people come from 
different places, that changes require time and care.

Both community PES and dual organizations share a commitment to 
participation, shared responsibility and collective action. They share a 
key idea: empowerment cannot be reduced to the individual level. Many 
social projects fail because they remain in a personal, intimate, almost 
therapeutic change. Dual militancy, as the most critical PES, breaks 
this limitation: it connects educational processes with structural 
change, with organized action, with the material transformation of reality.

Both fight against social isolation and are committed to building 
community as an alternative to neoliberal fragmentation. They are 
committed to long-term projects that think about the future and work to 
sustain processes, not just to respond to emergencies. They insist on 
training, shared reflection, debate, mutual learning and social 
transformation: this is exactly what community PES understands as 
educating for and by participation.

Both also share a methodology: continuous evaluation, the ability to 
review, to self-criticize, to learn from mistakes and to improve 
collectively. What in PES we call participatory evaluation and 
continuous learning, in our spaces usually appears as criticism and 
self-criticism: they are different names for the same need, which has 
much to learn from both realities.

Finally, and one of the main points, they also share an epistemology and 
a temporality. They understand that knowledge is born from practice, 
from lived experience, from collective dialogue. And they share a slow, 
patient and strategic logic of time: they work in the long term, knowing 
that profound transformations are not measured in weeks or in one-off 
campaigns, but in processes that mature, change and consolidate over time.

Not all that turns into gold is gold.
If the similarities show an obvious affinity, the differences help to 
shed light on the tensions and risks that run through both the PES and 
the militancy. It is not a question of opposing them, but of 
understanding where they can fail, where they can be co-opted and where 
they need to be revised.

A first crucial point is the social and political misunderstanding of 
the PES and, in general, of the so-called "third sector". As Julio Rubio 
and other critical authors have pointed out, much of contemporary social 
action has been co-opted by capitalism and neoliberal states as a 
mechanism for managing poverty, containing conflict and dampening social 
unrest. The ES, when trapped in this framework, runs the risk (a current 
reality) of becoming a device of welfare, verticality and social 
control, more concerned with making things "work" than with asking who 
decides how they should work.

Related to this is the institutionalization of the PES. When it becomes 
a bureaucratic instrument, a service more embedded in administrative 
logistics, part of the welfare state, it can slide towards 
depoliticizing, individualizing and technocratic practices. Instead of 
accompanying processes of collective emancipation, it can limit itself 
to "intervening in cases", adapting people to reality instead of 
questioning the reality that produces exclusion. And that is a real 
risk, of our day-to-day, not theoretical.

Another delicate point is the process of professionalization and 
privatization of socio-educational knowledge. Tools such as group 
facilitation, community mediation, socio-community strategies or 
planning for community development have, little by little, become 
professionalized skills, sometimes elitist, sometimes linked to the 
training market. What should be collective and intangible heritage is 
transformed into services, consultancies or pedagogical goods.

It is also necessary to name a recurring deficiency: the lack of a class 
perspective. PES talks a lot about community, context, inclusion, but 
often avoids mentioning class, conflict, material interest, political 
struggle. From a more critical perspective, we could say it this way: 
with a class perspective, PES ceases to be simply a discipline of 
intervention and becomes a deeply political tool, close to (if not heir 
to) libertarian methodologies. Where PES speaks of community as the axis 
of its praxis, militancy reminds us that this community is crossed by 
class, by structural inequality, by domination.

But militancy also has its own risks. Militancy can fall into a 
paralyzing moralism, into a dogmatism that absolutizes theory and 
forgets concrete people. It can privilege ideological purity over real 
life, or reproduce dynamics of harshness, competitiveness, exhaustion 
and guilt. It can, at times, forget the emotional, affective and 
relational dimension of political processes, and this is where PES is 
not only useful, but necessary: to remember that without care for the 
common there is no sustainable collective process, that without bonds 
there is no living organization and that without attending to bodies and 
emotions there is no lasting transformation.

Potential of this transdisciplinary work
These differences are not a wall; they are a place of fertile tension. 
They are the space in which PES and militancy can look at each other 
critically and help each other not to fall into their own abysses. And 
if we assume that there is a fertile intersection between PES and dual 
militancy, the logical question is: what can we do with it? What 
possibilities does it open up? What paths can we explore to strengthen 
collective processes, make them more conscious, more caring, more 
transformative?

A first axis is the transmission of socio-educational knowledge within 
political organizations, not from a position of technical superiority, 
but as a shared basis from which to think and act better. It is not 
about knowing more, but about putting at the common service tools that 
already exist, accumulated experiences and proven methodologies that can 
greatly enrich militant practices.

Along with this, it is key to value other forms of knowledge and other 
methodologies for disseminating political ideas. Not everything can be a 
talk, a rally or a masterful lecture. PES has been working for decades 
with participatory dynamics, games, socio-emotional and experiential 
methodologies that allow for deeper, more lasting and more meaningful 
learning. The ability to speak in an understandable way, to adapt the 
message to the public, to create accessible and welcoming spaces, is a 
first-rate political tool.

Another great potential lies in the use of educational sciences as 
lenses to better understand reality. Psychology, sociology, economics, 
anthropology, philosophy, social history or participatory research 
methods are not neutral knowledge: they are powerful tools for analyzing 
collective dynamics, understanding conflicts, identifying oppressions 
and designing transformative strategies. PES, by working at these 
intersections, can provide a holistic perspective that complements more 
traditional political analysis.

One of the most powerful proposals could be formulated as follows: 
politicize education and educabilize politics. That is, those who work 
in education assume that their work is necessarily political and those 
who do politics assume that all political action is also educational. If 
education is politicized and politics becomes pedagogical, both are 
strengthened.

We can also learn from their warnings. There are problems that we must 
consciously avoid: falling into welfareism that replaces organization; 
into bureaucratization that suffocates internal life; into militant 
attrition that breaks processes; into moralism and political purism that 
destroy before building. Here, PES, with its tools of evaluation, 
collective self-care and critical analysis, is once again an ally.

Participatory action research methodologies offer another fertile field 
of encounter: researching while transforming, learning while acting, 
producing collective knowledge from and for practice. And we should not 
forget the cultural and symbolic dimension. PES knows how to work with 
collective imaginaries, symbols, narratives and emotions. And that is 
deeply political: no social movement advances with reason alone; it also 
needs shared emotion, a sense of belonging, a common story.

These potentialities do not define a mechanical alliance, but rather an 
invitation: to think of militancy as a collective educational process 
and to think of education as an emancipatory political practice. In that 
encounter, perhaps, one of the keys to our time emerges.

As a projection
In an organization committed to social transformation, we cannot allow 
knowledge to remain locked up within ourselves. Each social educator, 
each activist, each companion, carries a wealth of professional, 
technical and theoretical knowledge that must be made available to the 
collective. It is not about individual displays or the accumulation of 
authority: it is about giving them collective form, building with them 
strategies, practices and processes that strengthen common action.

PES brings to militancy something that is not always recognized: its 
capacity to care for human processes, emotional support, conscious and 
reflective accompaniment, to preserve the continuity of the collective, 
to protect the bonds that allow an organization not to break under 
pressure or conflict. Militancy, for its part, returns to PES a clear 
perspective of class, of structural struggle, a constant reminder that 
care or mediation is not enough, but that it is necessary to intervene 
in the deep causes of inequalities and oppression.

To work from this awareness is to understand that our work is not heroic 
or individual, but collective and invisible in its deepest effects: we 
create capacities, autonomy and organization that will survive our 
absence, strengthening community, struggle and mutual education. It is 
an ethical and political practice of the utmost responsibility, because 
it looks beyond ourselves, beyond the immediate, towards a horizon of 
emancipation in which, we hope, our presence will no longer be necessary.

And in this dialogue a profound reflection is born: the best social 
educator is the one who does not fail. The best anarchist, social and 
organized militant, is the one whose collective work generates 
structures, habits and capacities in such a way that, if we disappear, 
social movements would continue without our interventions. We both work, 
paradoxically, not to exist, because our existence is the product of an 
unjust and inhumane system; our existence and action are necessary, but 
ideally they would not be because the reality that justifies our 
resistance no longer exists.

Inés Kropo, activist of Xesta

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/02/18/entre-a-praxe-educativa-e-a-accion-politica-a-educacion-social-na-militancia-dual/
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