Popular education: the many challenges

This essay focuses the conceptions about popular education, considering the epistemological comprehensions that guide them, proposing an ontological analysis of the term. Different understandings about what would be an education adjusted for that they are not socially privileged result in different conceptions, considering: what kind of education to develop; responsibilities with this education; objectives and principles. These questions are a challenge, and reflect the complexity of the question. Considering the formative logic in a class society, we argue that the domain of the work process and the scientific knowledge about the practice improves the perception about the social contradictions. In this way, the educative work has to recover the dialectic relation, having as a goal to stimulate the conscience of the social and educational limits.