Fighting to Learn: Popular Education and Guerrilla War in El Salvador (Paperback)

by John L. Hammond (Author) "Chebo was a volunteer literacy teacher who met a group of adults from his community, Apulo Amatitan, for two hours five nights a week..." (more)
Key Phrases: syllabic families, literacy circles, repopulated communities, San Salvador, Segundo Montes City, Mesa Grande (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Popular education played an important role in the 12-year guerilla war against the Salvadorian government. This study recounts the experiences of 100 Salvadorian students and teachers, examining the Christian base of popular education and moving on to show how education was a political practice.

Product Details

• Paperback: 253 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (July 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813525268
• ISBN-13: 978-0813525266
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #451,314 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The future of education and healthcare may look like this..., January 3, 2000

By	Deb Social Worker (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This book is an inspired, readable, and labor of love account of the growth of popular education in El Salvador. The writer shares the continuing challenges faced and rewards shared by students, teachers, and those who teach the teachers.

As in El Salvador, the US, especially Texas, California, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona will increasingly face similar challenges. With the growth of the Spanish speaking populations in the U.S. over the next twenty years, educators and health care professionals will be challenged to adapt and at times abandon certain professional roles and attitudes, in favor of more indigenous methods and messengers for advancing literacy and promoting life enhancing health practices and interventions. Public policy in Texas is already shifting toward the use of community based practitioners in healthcare with a view toward building social capital in Hispanic cultures that can become self-sustaining. Professional treatment and education models are not abandoned, but new program growth may be toward the use of professionals to teach the teachers, health educators, and care givers to care for their own communities, and build community based, rather than, state driven programs.

Social service professionals in the U.S. may see their future in this book.