WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #348 - History, Education: Popular universities (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The first popular universities, designed as a place where workers could
come and listen to conferences or general culture courses, free of
charge, were born "in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair"[5]. ---- Their
objective is to disseminate knowledge on a larger scale. Unlike the
Labor Exchanges, they do not offer practical or professional courses;
there is also no exam to obtain a diploma. They differ from conferences
given in universities in the sense that the speaker does not have a
platform: he is on the same level as those who come to listen to him but
also to discuss with him.

The first popular university was created in April 1898 in Paris.

It was imagined by the wood sculptor and typographer Georges Deherme
(1870-1937), originally with libertarian ideas (he moved away around
1894[1]), and a group of workers from Montreuil-sous-Bois joined by
intellectuals including the republican Gabriel Séailles (1852-1922),
professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne and one of the founders of the
League for Human Rights[2].

This first initiative takes the name Cooperation of Ideas, which is the
title of the monthly review of positive sociology founded by Deherme[3].

Popular universities enjoyed great success, as evidenced by their
meteoric development in the first decade of the 20th century (in 1914,
there were 230 in France).

Some are the initiative of anarchist activists, such as that of Grenoble
founded in 1907 by Charles Guinet (born in 1861)[4].

Despite a desire to offer emancipatory education to the working world, a
gap is widening between worker expectations and speakers, who are more
accustomed to speaking to a student audience and not always managing to
adapt their courses to a diverse audience.

The outbreak of the First World War put a sharp halt to the development
of popular universities, which were reborn in other forms at the end of
the war.

Céline (UCL Lyon)

To validate

[1]Jean Maitron, "DEHERME Georges", Le Maitron,
Maitron.fr/spip.php?article108756.

[2]Hugues Lenoir, "Brief history of popular universities", March 8,
2014: Hugueslenoir.fr/breve-histoire-des-universites-populaires/.

[3]Laurent Dartigues, "The Popular University. Part 1: Return to a story
to write", Carnets Vagabonds, June 17, 2012, Doi.org/10.58079/orq6.

[4]Yves Lequin, Rolf Dupuy and Marianne Enckell, "GUINET Charles,
Antoine", Le Maitron des anarchistes, Maitron.fr/spip.php?article153678.

[5]Christian Verrier, "A brief history of popular universities",
Ufr-sepf.univ-paris8.fr/une-breve-histoire-des-universites-populaires

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Education-Les-universites-populaires
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