EDUCATION: Global Forum Calls for Egalitarian Public Schooling

By Clarinha Glock Reprint | | Print |

Clarinha Glock

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Oct 29 2001 (IPS) - Public education for all, financed by the state and not seen as a merchandise or service but aimed at building a democratic, egalitarian society with solidarity was the key demand set forth by the World Education Forum, in Brazil.

The proposals discussed by 17,000 educators, researchers, students, politicians, trade unionists and social activists meeting in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre were summed up in a draft Charter that will continue to be debated over the Internet.

The gathering, attended by delegates from five continents, forms part of a process opened in this Brazilian city in January by the World Social Forum, which drew together leftist political groupings and civil society organisations from around the world, with the aim of showing that “another world is possible.”

In one of the speeches that drew the most resounding applause at the Wednesday through Saturday Forum, French pedagogue Bernard Charlot said that what was needed was a new network, not based on capital, but on solidarity and respect for cultural differences and the uniqueness of each individual.

“Each human being has the right to their roots, and to build their subjectivity. If schools fail to respect those differences, the risk of failure grows,” added the professor of education science, who specialises in socialisation and local communities.

Charlot said the biggest difficulty was to define what culture is to be respected, in order to avoid the danger of limiting people to outdated visions that are incapable of explaining today’s world or so closed in on themselves that they provoke intolerance.

“Respecting differences is to discover, recognise and value the culture of the other as well as one’s own,” said Charlot.

It is important for young people to be aware of social diversity and other lifestyles, said Charlot, who added that a world with solidarity requires “humanisation”, as well as socialisation and singularity – in other words, the originality of the socialised person.

The information society, a product of the new communication technologies, has negative effects, said Charlot. On one hand, it imposes standards of industrial productivity on schools, while merely transmitting information without teaching youngsters “knowledge”, which signifies questioning the meaning of things.

The director of the French newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique, Ignacio Ramonet, a professor in communication theory, said the Internet, for all its merits, did not promote equality, but a new kind of “digital inequality.” He cited a United Nations study indicating that the worldwide web only benefits a small minority of the world population.

“In many countries, the Internet does not reach remote areas, simply because there is no school, electricity or telephones,” said Ramonet.

One way to fight social exclusion is through the creation of “educational cities”, a concept presented by Pilar Figueras, secretary-general of the International Association of Educational Cities and a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, in Spain.

Figueras’ proposal extends education beyond the school to the entire urban setting, through integrated policies on sports, health, care for the elderly and popular participation in budgetary decisions.

The “Charter of Educational Cities”, signed in Barcelona in 1990, suggests a new right of citizens: to build alternative cities together. The movement has already spread to 228 cities in various regions of the world.

The movement’s success is based on a pooling of information and experiences by cities and governments, “each of which assumes its responsibilities, while acting as accomplices in the construction of a happier city, with a stronger sense of solidarity,” said Figueras.

At the Forum, France’s Minister for Vocational Education, Jean- Luc Melenchon, signed a cooperation agreement with the government of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, whose capital is Porto Alegre.

Through the agreement, France will finance, for two years, teacher training courses and the development of technical- vocational education in Rio Grande do Sul, especially in biotechnology, telecommunications and hotel management.

Chilean professor Fidel Oteiza, director of the Comenius Centre for Innovation in Education, described the World Education Forum as “a coming together of energy and ideas.”

Porto Alegre’s Municipal Secretary of Education Eliezer Pacheco, the general coordinator of the Forum, said the gathering was “a triumph for the progressive forces that are committed to the construction of a better world, and are against those who want to keep the wealth from being spread around.”

The draft Charter can be found and commented on at the following website: www.forummundialdeeducacao.com.br.

The organising commission will sift through the proposals submitted for additions and corrections to the Charter before drafting the final document, to be presented at the second World Social Forum, Jan 31-Feb 5 in Porto Alegre.

Besides visiting the website, interested parties can access the debates at the first World Education Forum, which have been compiled in book form and on CD, along with a summary of the 782 papers presented at the gathering.