COMMUNICATION-COLOMBIA: ‘School Press’ Brings Media to Children

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yadira Ferrer

BOGOTA, Jun 7 2000 (IPS) - Teachers and journalists are working together in 15 cities in Colombia to bring children into closer contact with current events, as part of a programme carried out by the private media association Andiarios in conjunction with the ministry of education.

The aim of the ‘Prensa Escuela’ (School Press) project, which was launched in 1993, is for students “to learn about current events in a fun way, to get to know today’s protagonists on the national scene and to get into the habit of reading,” Ofelia Corradine, with the Bogota daily ‘El Tiempo’, told IPS.

Corradine is the general coordinator of a team that organises workshops, forums, cultural events, the production of school papers and debates on current events as part of the Prensa Escuela project.

This year, ‘El Tiempo’ organised a forum in which delegates of the 80 schools participating in Prensa Escuela in the capital met with Mayor Enrique Peñaloza to express their criticism and comments on the situation in the city, and to hear the mayor’s plans for municipal projects.

Another activity in which the newspaper is involved is the production of the ‘Mi Tiempo’ paper, which high school students and teachers put out every two months, distributing 35,000 copies to the schools participating in the Prensa Escuela project, said Corradine.

In workshops organised by the project, primary and secondary school teachers are coached on how to incorporate newspapers into their lesson plans, such as using the economy section for teaching math or the culture section in Spanish, literature or humanities classes.

On field trips, students learn about each step of the process of producing a newspaper – from the classified ads section, advertising and the writing and editing of articles to watching the papers come hot off the press.

Through the programme, students not only learn about what is happening in their city, their country and the world, but develop a critical eye with respect to current events and how they are covered by the media.

The Caribbean coast town of Barranquilla, the fourth largest city in this conflict-torn South American country of 40 million, is the only city where both daily papers are involved in the project: ‘El Heraldo’, coordinated by Laurean Puerta, and ‘Libertad’, directed by Josefina Villareal.

Villarreal told IPS that her newspaper received weekly visits by students from local schools, and organised workshops for them on the environment and current events.

The ‘El Pedregal’ school for special-education students in Medellín in northwestern Colombia is one of the 70 schools in that city participating in the Prensa Escuela project, with the newspaper ‘El Colombiano’.

The school’s 350 students, who have learning, physical or mental disabilities, Down’s syndrome, or hearing or language problems enthusiastically await the newspaper’s weekly supplement.

A different student is chosen every week to act as “vocerito” or delivery person to hand out the supplement among students and teachers and remind everyone of the activities they are to carry out.

The principal of El Pedregal, Carmen Arango, said being chosen for the task was one of the most coveted distinctions the children could earn.

The Prensa Escuela project is a valuable tool for teaching and fomenting coexistence, “because the children learn to share the paper with others, discuss the issues covered and improve their conduct,” said Arango.

Prensa Escuela is administered by an executive committee made up of representatives of Andiarios and two delegates of the media, who meet regularly to coordinate the work and discuss the activities of participating newspapers and schools.

The programme is directly financed by the participating dailies, by contrast to similar projects in the United States and Europe, which receive contributions from a range of private companies.