Radically Possible Freinet

By Eliud Salinas

Being Freinet is about touching your heart, freely loving what we do, filling pedagogical caresses and the harmonic strokes of insurgent didactics with rebellion. Critical thinking knows no borders; it fights for the end of war, is dialectical, and environmentalist. Theory becomes art and culture; a light that illuminates the darkest corners, from Tamazulapan, the heart of the FECSM, with revolutionary flags. The welcome is eternal. Oaxaca embraces with the spirit of the Isthmus, the taste of the jungle, and the pulse of the coast. Mexico, our land, your land, dances both the zapateado and any dance in the world. Stellar chimes light up the rainy afternoons of coffee and reflection. Freinet pedagogy is neither a credential nor someone's property; it is emancipation and collective anti-capitalist strength. Freinet militants, enjoy the party and life. Combative greetings from Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico, from Itza, Monse, Carmen, the upcoming Baby, and Eliud. Here, we write in red what is radically possible.

Poster by Barbara Eckley

RIDEF 2024... Amid global barbarism, with the atrocity of war, progressive alchemy, and the resurgence of fascism. In a country where we are missing 43 and thousands more, where aspiring student teachers face precariousness, and rural normal schools are attacked by the system to eradicate them. In a context of climate crisis, death at the Chiapas border, displaced people, forest fires, droughts, floods, hunger, and misery. The new president of Mexico announces the neoliberal continuity of the 4T in education, while Mario Delgado laughs at the democratic teaching profession, shrouded in a mantle of impunity. It is a place of labor precarity, public health misery, where soda companies own the water, and businessmen govern in a capitalist style, with a north where at least three women disappear daily as victims of kidnapping, and where competing for an economic incentive is presented as the idea of teacher revaluation.

This is a bit of national context. However, there is still hope. The unison beat of Freinet warmth is a platform where utopias are woven, marching toward a different world. What do you think?