By Clarinha Glock
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Oct 25 2001 (IPS)

Schools have become a source of social injustice because they do not ensure that young people are ready for employment, and thus widen the gap between rich and poor, British academic Stephen Stoer told the World Education Forum, meeting in this southern Brazilian city this week.

Stoer, a professor at the University of Oporto, Portugal, and editor of the academic journal ‘Educaçao, Sociedade, Culturas’, of the Association of Sociology and Anthropology of Education, was the keynote speaker at the opening session of the Forum under way in Porto Alegre.

For many years it was believed that the most important thing was to promote equality in access to schooling, it was a matter of quantity, but today we know that entry into the educational system is not enough, but that it is essential to ensure the students’ success, he said.

To do so, we must create a new pedagogy and change today’s reality, without restricting the schools to the role of teaching academic subjects alone. They must also be entrusted with the role of teaching tolerance of differences, Stoer told the gathering, which has drawn more than 10,000 participants from around the world.

“We need strong investments in public schools and universities in order to combat the tendency towards failure. Government investment is key,” he added.

The four-day World Education Forum, which ends Saturday, will see the presentation of 764 studies on education based on one of four approaches: education as a right, its relationship with technology and work, its cultural impacts, or its role in transforming society.

In addition to panel discussions involving international experts, there are also debates and reports on specific issues, such as adult literacy, educational assessment, curriculum changes, and technological innovations.

Delegates from numerous countries agreed with Stoer on the need to intervene in the educational process in order to integrate the right to knowledge as a foundation of personal growth and citizenship, and not limit it merely to serving as training for workers who will eventually enter the labour market.

Even in industrialised countries, such as Belgium where school is obligatory for everyone ages six to 18, the inequalities are dramatic, according to Jean-Marie Vanlathem, policy secretary at Belgium’s Ministry of Youth Affairs

“The rich grow richer every day, and the poor grow poorer every day. We have to find new methods so that everyone reaps the same benefits from studying,” commented Vanlathem.

The World Education Forum is one channel through which we can resist efforts to privatise education, he added.

The objective of this international meeting is to bring together representatives of different educational trends and realities to produce an assessment of the global educational panorama and to exchange information on successful initiatives for fighting social exclusion.

Ramón Moncada, head of the City Education Programme of Medellín, Colombia, pointed out that the governments of many countries have been quick to accept the idea that neo-liberalism “is the train that everyone must take” if they do not want to be left behind.

“But that train has an owner and it leads to a political project that does not belong to us, and it is travelling at a rapid pace,” especially for the Latin American reality, said Moncada.

Of Colombia’s 40 million inhabitants, 35 percent live in absolute poverty, meaning their basic needs of education, health services, clean water and housing are not met.

The inequitable distribution of wealth is reflected in the schools, said the Colombian expert, adding that the country’s decades-long civil war shifts public finances away from health and education to military expenditures.

Furthermore, many rural teachers face death threats or are forced by the ongoing violence to leave the towns where they have been working.

People are leaving the countryside and children are abandoning the schools, said Moncada. Of every 100 young Colombians who want to attend high school, at least 30 are unable to, and just 20 make to the university, most of which charge tuition.

Situations like this make the Porto Alegre Forum all the more important because it encourages demands for “citizen participation, including the monitoring of policies and budgets as a means of combating corruption,” he said.

A strategy for improving the situation of the developing world would be the conversion of external debt into investment in education and health, which could occur through a process overseen by the World Bank, suggested Pierre Fonkoua, of Cameroon.

These and other alternatives will be up for debate in the Forum’s remaining days, and those achieving consensus will be recommended for the Charter that will be submitted for the delegates’ approval this Saturday.

The World Education Forum has also laid the foundations for the Mosaic of Books, a sort of universal library consisting of books on education issues, donated by the conference participants.

The Mosaic was begun Oct 10 with the donation of a copy of the Portuguese manuscripts for “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, written in 1968 by Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire during his exile in Chile. His son, Lutgards Costa Freire, made the contribution to the library project.

The Porto Alegre meeting is linked to the World Social Forum, the first meeting of which was held here last January, and is to be repeated here in January 2002. Its symbol is also a mosaic, which was made from inscribed stones brought here by delegates from all over the world.

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