What is Shared Memories?
In 2017 I developed a project, process and methodology that I called “Memorias Compartidas. Intergenerational and intercultural co-education project”. What started as a pilot program today is already an ongoing movement sustained by a good number of committed co-educators.
In a first iteration, I applied this methodology to a university course on contemporary Spanish history taught at a North American university. This course was in Spanish and was aimed at students from different disciplines. I imagined it as a shared journey that began in 1939, with the end of the Spanish Civil War, and concluded in the Spanish present.
The origin of this methodology is rooted in an academic position practicing what in the United States we call “Academic Civic Engagement”, a syntagma that could be translated as “civic academic engagement” and that, in many ways, is indebted to the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire and his development in the 1960s of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the teachings of the father of Argentine social psychology, Enrique Pichon-Rivière, with his teaching theory.
My adherence to these traditions has led me to the invention of curricular designs and subjects where theory, praxis, the classroom and the street go hand in hand. Likewise, this commitment has been manifested in the methodological development of forms of co-research and co-production of situated knowledge (involved and applied to the processes studied), always accompanied by the people involved as co-educators.
Shared Memories is therefore my methodological response to a need to intervene in the public sphere by putting educational and research tools at the service of systemic transformation. Since its invention I have been implementing it in a variety of courses with transformative results for all participants. It could be said that with and thanks to this methodology I have managed to transfer to reality many of the theoretical proposals belonging to the field of social psychology and critical pedagogy, both committed to social transformation.
What does the methodology consist of?
In the context of Shared Memories, teaching and learning are two processes that occur simultaneously, hence we speak of a dialectical and democratic process of “teaching” (Pichon-Rivière’s concept). In the context of co-education, the boundaries that distinguish the traditional roles of “students” and “educators” become blurred as both parties attend their appointments as learners.
Within the framework of weekly meetings in randomly assigned pairs, the participants exchange experiences, testimonies and reflections based on the materials and themes that we work on in the courses. In this context, both parties teach and learn, hence the experience of the sessions as a whole potentially contributes to transforming their positions and dispositions.
Simplifying a lot, some objectives of this methodology are: to open the field of knowledge and academic knowledge to the field of oral storytelling, experiences and experiences; to exercise critical and self-critical thinking by inviting participants to inhabit different paradoxes of our time; to share the experience of vulnerability underlying all dialectical relationships. At no time is it a question of promoting meetings for the mere transmission of knowledge or information. Finally, Shared Memories is an invitation to the confabulation of different similarities in a time and a space where we can link ourselves in order to think and project ourselves in a horizon of possible good news.
Who participates in Shared Memories?
Memorias Compartidas is committed to the heterogeneous confluence of people, knowledge, disciplines and social sectors. It is based on a system of rotating and random weekly conversations among all the participants.
Each participant comes with the willingness to share his or her life experience. In each session, attitudes related to the habitus learned, consciously and unconsciously, are exposed, and in their exposition and analysis they are made explicit and, sometimes, modeled.
What position does the teacher acquire by adopting this methodology?
I start from the premise that education takes place in society, so I understand the classroom as an open place where knowledge from different disciplines and sectors crosses and where a variety of social agents participate.
Adopting this methodology leads to decentralizing the role of “teacher in charge of the classroom” and to trust in the process of co-education. Obviously, this implies relinquishing all “control” over the educational process and, at times, having to face unforeseen situations that are not free of tension.
The entry of co-educators also forces us to distance ourselves from those positions that consider education as an extension of a bank accounting or as a procedural space for uncritical formatting, standardization, certification or the mere inculcation of useful knowledge for the formation of future market workers. This approach to critical pedagogy ultimately seeks the integral formation of the person in a process of developing autonomy and criteria.
In contrast to the market-based educational model that promotes instrumental knowledge, by incorporating this methodology we opt for each meeting to be an opportunity for the awakening of active and critical citizens who value the search for knowledge and who feel ready to participate in a political debate that aspires to the common good.
And as no co-education or citizen co-research project is executed alone, Shared Memories always requires a web of beautiful confabulations and complicities.
A process open to continuous revision in each of its iterations.
At the end of each course, all participants complete an anonymous evaluation of the process. These questionnaires are shared and discussed in an open council session, both in the United States and in Spain. I use the Open Council because I seek to model a form of evaluation based on direct democracy. It is an operational mode of governance, management and administration of a common good within the system of the Commons. The outcome of the deliberations translates into concrete proposals for change, which are incorporated into future iterations.
Finally, and as part of the same process, every summer I set an annual co-education meeting to which I invite all the participating co-educators. These meetings consist of a couple of days of coexistence and are necessary to establish bonds and to work together as a work and support group. Throughout these meetings we analyze our participation and we share learning, questions and general doubts. We also share experiences that strengthen us in our role as social co-educators.
The more experienced co-educators serve as support to the newcomers and in this way we have gradually formed an internal school of co-education. In the Co-educators section you can read their comments on the experience.
Finally, we closed these meetings with the presentation of the co-education certificate and a celebration that, in addition to reminding us of the road we have traveled, invites us to continue walking together in the next stages.
