Rethinking “educació lliure”an ethnographic and anthropological study of three alternative schools and educational projects in contemporary catalonia

Résumé

Τhis PhD thesis is an ethnographic and anthropological study of alternative schools and educational projects in contemporary Catalonia based on three cases, a private school, a public school, and a self-managed educational project. Through participant observation and interviews, it aims to describe their pedagogical proposals and actual practices and explore parental world views and involvement. It also attempts a contextualized, critical, and comparative analysis based on the pedagogical proposals, power relations, belongingness, and the cultural transmission and learning processes, both intentional and incidental. The study shows how alternative schools and educational projects may be both places of control and obedience and freedom, spaces of social reproduction and social transformation. On the one hand, hegemonic, individualistic values are transmitted, social injustice is ignored, while social and cultural segregation is produced. On the other hand, alternative, communitarian values are also transmitted, horizontal relations are built, and direct democracy is promoted. The thesis ultimately argues that through intentional collective unlearning, breaking the limits of the school tribes, and expanding mutual aid towards all, more elements with transformative potential could unwrap.