From basic education to university and at all levels of non-formal education: an urgent necessity.
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ara Imprimir – Printable Version
To educate for citizen participation is a task for us all, to be carried out in the very long term. Within this task there are no magic formulas or infallible recipes, but there are some certainties: if we want to educate for citizen participation and we want societies of real citizens, we have to begin by educating children in democratic values and principles from basic level to the future professionals in higher education; we have to educate children and young people in formal and non-formal systems.
Today more than ever education is a necessity for changing the harmful trend of an important part of the public, social, economic, political and cultural life of world societies. Educating children for citizen participation will result in responsible men and women. These men and women will be good citizens as long as they are capable of building fairer societies with equal opportunities; societies where the rules protect rights and where the duties of every person are respected.
There is currently a vital necessity of democratising education, knowledge, political systems, mass media and all those issues related to public life. It is urgent to democratise all the fields that still determine a model of world and society which allows and promotes inequalities and social injustice. All this symbolises democracy.
In this magazine our aim is to encourage creative and positive reflection, new leadership and innovative initiatives so that education for development remains a powerful tool for the building of new societies which are increasingly more tolerant, supportive, plural, equal and truly democratic.
Education at preschool, professional and postgraduate levels currently faces the greatest challenge: beyond teaching knowledge and tools to capitalize on the advances in technology and communication, today it is time to focus on the way new generations conceive the world and its society, on the way they use their intelligence, control their emotions and interact with other people. Secondly, it is necessary to educate in the creation of a cosmopolitan identity towards global citizenship.
The challenge is clear and overwhelming; each person has to be trained in attitudes and skills which, based on values and knowledge, are functional and operative in the daily life of every boy, girl, youngster, and all people.
Education for citizen participation is the main route of access to the building of democracy. This education has two levels: explaining what is/should be education for citizen participation and democracy, where procedural mechanisms are taught; but also turning school or educational institutions into a space for living democracy daily, creating spaces for participation, dialogue, joint responsibility, etc.
By means of individuals interacting through the skills and knowledge obtained from the training currently needed, world societies can aspire to be truly democratic, and from that moment, establish the bases to develop better opportunities for everyone and achieve greater levels of economic, political, social and cultural prosperity.
The necessity of developing new formal and non-formal educational models strengthens the necessity that can no longer be deferred of training in democratic principles that become habits through which everyone can observe, analyse, reflect, question with critical criteria and interpret reality, and that of his/her equals, whether it is family, the immediate community, institutions, companies or the rest of society with which he/she interacts, and act accordingly.
Education today, regardless of the level or modality in question, must focus on the integrity and humanity of every person, that is, the way people conceive themselves as citizens who act in accordance with coexistent, civic, moral and democratic rules which guide their daily actions to live in freedom and without subordination, as well as to be educated and work in business and governmental fields or in civil society organisations.
Education for the transformation of societies into better societies demands educating future citizens conscientiously. It demands educating for freedom, autonomy, solidarity, sociability, reflection, critical thinking and judgment, dialogue and interpretation, the critical reading of mass media and everything that keeps people away from the strong temptation of perpetuating classist, exclusive, hierarchical, undignified and anti-democratic systems of belief and coexistence which lack equity and social justice.
We have had enough of educational models that divide, polarise and submit for the benefit of a high, privileged and tyrannical class. We, the citizens who have achieved higher levels of education, are responsible for allowing such errors and faults in educational models.
It is said that we are all involved in politics and it is not just hollow rhetoric; although nowadays many people think that the only people involved in politics are politicians, nothing could be further from the truth. Educational policy is also a responsibility of all of us, of each teacher or manager from school or university centres and of those civil society organisations which promote non-formal schemes.
Educational policy should be aimed at two vital axes: on the one hand, the structuring and consolidation of a democratic political system in each region or nation, and on the other, the training of new and better citizens who can actively get involved in each stage of their educational, moral and emotional life, and guarantee their conduct is also democratic.
We should promote democracy as a way of life, of coexistence and social cooperation within our increasingly complex and plural societies, and also as the most advisable form of government and path towards political, economic and social development. We should promote democracy as the best way to overcome the adverse situations facing current societies and future generations.
What we have said up to now frames the type of education needed for promoting citizen participation and establishes the main role it plays as a means of building democracy in current societies.
What is the profile of citizens who should be trained for present and future generations?
Below are some indications which are not thorough or complete, but intend to guide towards the identification of some distinctive features of citizens that will be trained under the formal or non-formal educational models previously mentioned.
Citizens trained under new educational models will be distinguished by their integrity, humanity and the following features:
- Free and autonomous due to the ability to use their intelligence and emotions, but at the same time cooperative and supportive with their equals.
- Capable of managing and making individual and collective decisions under a model of political and social coexistence based on democratic principles.
- Sensitive and duly informed that private interests (everything that accommodates the current economic model) should coexist harmonically with the interests of public life
- Sensitive and duly informed of both their fundamental rights and obligations, as well as the different mechanisms of citizen participation available, their scope and limits.
- Sensitive and duly informed of the issues of public life and understanding the political system of their local, regional and national environment.
- Convinced of the value of democracy as a way of life, social coexistence and government.
- Willing to reach agreements and resolve conflicts in a pacific way.
- Capable of discussing and interpreting situations of public life and getting involved in the decisions concerning aspects in which they want to influence.
- Capable of assuming joint responsibility in certain tasks of the state in which they want to have greater benefits through their involvement as an organised and active civil society in resolving problems or designing more efficient laws and public policies.
- With skills and knowledge to express themselves in a critical, pacific and respectful way through institutional channels, including those that correspond to civil society.
- With skills and knowledge to participate in the political system and to enforce their concerns and demands, as well as their own and collective interests.
- Capable of strengthening the democratic institutions acting in a responsible way as citizens, whether individually or collectively.
Number 2
All the qualities we have described in the previous section are part of the luggage of global citizenship. Some of the features of this concept can be seen on the cover of the current issue of the magazine. Once again, our friends of Ekilikua have summarised in a beautiful image one of the basic ideas of global and popular dimension. In this image we can see the planet posing in front of a group of painters. It is very interesting to see how each one of them makes a different interpretation of what they see.
Our group of artists is very diverse and assorted and so their interpretations are multiple and full of overflowing creativity. Something really descriptive can be derived from all of this: most paintings offer a lot more than what is apparent. The world in which we live is thus much more than the naked eye can see and certainly much more interesting than what we can even imagine.
Following this path, we discover that the development of the global dimension includes creativity as one of its basic exercises, understood as deepening in the diversity of our world, as well as in the surprise and joy that its potentialities produce. When we work on diversity with children focusing on creativity we provide them with a valuable defense against the pensée unique, the cultural colonialism (or of any other kind) and the fear of the different.
When we work on the global dimension, we all become artists, imagining the world we dream of or a planet inclusive to all. But we can also draw an image of what it is already and what is lacking to reach our ideal world. Following this path we thus become familiar with the knowledge of the world, its diversity and at the same time the lack of justice, in what refers to rights and care.
For this purpose, from the perspective of education for development we are at present working hard to create cooperation networks. These networks reflect diversity, seek justice and one of their main objectives is to generate enough creativity for our world to be an inclusive place. The articles in this issue (2) reflect this idea from different perspectives.
In the articles section, the four proposals included come from the Spanish state, but they only represent the tip of the iceberg of the cooperation spider’s webs throughout the planet.
The first article has been developed in the spider’s web of the university and is the result of asking what does critical practice for development mean? Research is developed around the university postgraduate course in which they are working and from that point the links with the fifth generation of Education for Development are studied, focusing on how both strengthen each other. The article provides interesting conclusions for reflection on essential learning and their consequences for carrying out experiences of this kind. The article is signed by Alejandra Boni, a reference in this area, Sergio Belda, Jordi Paris and Lucía Terol, all of them linked to the Máster Universitario en Cooperación al Desarrollo, [Master’s degree on Cooperation for Development] formerly known as Máster en Políticas y Procesos de Desarrollo [Master’s degree on Development Policies and Processes], given at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV) since 2007.
The second article comes from Paraguay and is related to the pedagogical dimensions of cooperation when we place communal transformation in the centre of the action carried out. The authors present the initiative of the Centro de Atención a la Comunidad (CAC), which is aimed at promoting human development focusing on the educational and social fields of the community. The objective of this article is to discover whether, considering the basic principles of research-action, their development design and process comply with a communal action model, which from their pedagogical theoretical framework is necessarily understood as socio-educational. This research, carried out by the consolidated research group PSITIC, from the Universitat Ramon Llull, and written by Ana López Murat and Jordi Longás Mayayo, provides some interesting answers concerning which may be the role of the assessment of cooperation projects in a pedagogical key.
The third article presents a very thick spider’s web represented by the Red Internacional de Educación para la Ciudadanía y la Transformación Social [International Network of Education for Citizenship and Social Change]. This network is composed of 10 social and educational organisations from seven countries: Novamérica (Brazil), Centro de Derechos y Desarrollo –CEDAL- (Peru), Fundación del Viso (Argentina), Fundación Pequeño Trabajador (Colombia), Centro de Derechos Humanos Victoria Díez (Mexico), Pronatura Sus, A.C. (Mexico), Centro Multiservicios Educativos (Mexico), CEMSE (Bolivia), Centro de Educación Alternativa Jaihuaco –CEPJA- (Bolivia), InteRed (Spain). In this article we will find a summarised version of broader research on how the concept of global citizenship is built, carried out also by Alejandra Boni Aristizábal, as well as Estela López Torrejón and Jadicha Sow Paino from GEDCE (Grupo de Estudios de Desarrollo, Cooperación y Ética Aplicada) of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and two independent researchers: Begoña Arias García and Monique Leivas Vargas. A project like this international network represents a direct experience of what we mentioned previously in the prelude of this chapter about living diversity. A really interesting article.
Finally, we include another network with an educational approach such as the one created by the project of Intermón Oxfam, Global Express. In this article, Georgina Casas carries out research on how the process of education for global citizenship is created. It is very interesting to see how the conclusions of the article show that the material contributes partially to the building of citizen skills. The author admits that Global Express allows pupils to have a more empathetic vision of reality and to understand certain global problems; but on the other hand, it does not achieve positive results when promoting the pupil’s skills to carry out actions for social change. This exercise of self-criticism and improvement in assessment is something that undoubtedly gives quality to the project and the article.
In the reviews section, we have also received four collaborations. The first concerns a book which brings us nearer to education for development in a postcolonial key, a significant trend led by Vanessa Andreotti and Lynn Mario T.M. de Souza: “Postcolonial perspectives on global citizenship education”. The commentary belongs to Miguel Ardanaz, from FERE-CECA Madrid and director of our magazine. Miguel sees in this publication a deepening into the third generation of Education for Development: i.e. critical education.
In the second article, Kevin Bailey, Headmaster of Hagley Primary School and member of TIDE, reviews the book “Civic education for diverse citizens in global times. Rethinking theory and practice” edited by Beth C. Rubin and James M. Giarelli. Kevin, from his perspective as Headmaster of a Primary School, offers an interesting view of the analyses concerning civic and citizens’ education.
In the section of international events, Iepala (Institute of Political Studies for Latin America, Asia and Africa) presents a synthesis of the “II Seminar International on Critical Education for Development Cooperation”. Many organisations and speakers were represented, all contributing significantly from their particular perspective. We would especially like to mention Oscar Jara, Rémy Herrera y Boaventura de Sousa Santos. It was undoubtedly an important and interesting encounter.
Finally, in the section of international documents, we include a comment on a document which is not really a document although it is becoming one because of its repercussion and impact. It is the document entitled “Finding Frames: new ways to engage the UK public in global poverty” of Andrew Darnton and Martin Kirk. This document is reviewed by Rodrigo Barahona, coordinator of the Educational programme for a Global Citizenship of Intermón Oxfam. Rodrigo describes how the report does not “prescribe” solutions based on the theory of values and the framework on which these are structured, but it does indicate various itineraries. In any case, we hope this interesting review encourages reading.
From basic education to university and at all levels of non-formal education: an urgent necessity.
Versión para Imprimir – Printable Version
To educate for citizen participation is a task for us all, to be carried out in the very long term. Within this task there are no magic formulas or infallible recipes, but there are some certainties: if we want to educate for citizen participation and we want societies of real citizens, we have to begin by educating children in democratic values and principles from basic level to the future professionals in higher education; we have to educate children and young people in formal and non-formal systems.
Today more than ever education is a necessity for changing the harmful trend of an important part of the public, social, economic, political and cultural life of world societies. Educating children for citizen participation will result in responsible men and women. These men and women will be good citizens as long as they are capable of building fairer societies with equal opportunities; societies where the rules protect rights and where the duties of every person are respected.
There is currently a vital necessity of democratising education, knowledge, political systems, mass media and all those issues related to public life. It is urgent to democratise all the fields that still determine a model of world and society which allows and promotes inequalities and social injustice. All this symbolises democracy.
In this magazine our aim is to encourage creative and positive reflection, new leadership and innovative initiatives so that education for development remains a powerful tool for the building of new societies which are increasingly more tolerant, supportive, plural, equal and truly democratic.
Education at preschool, professional and postgraduate levels currently faces the greatest challenge: beyond teaching knowledge and tools to capitalize on the advances in technology and communication, today it is time to focus on the way new generations conceive the world and its society, on the way they use their intelligence, control their emotions and interact with other people. Secondly, it is necessary to educate in the creation of a cosmopolitan identity towards global citizenship.
The challenge is clear and overwhelming; each person has to be trained in attitudes and skills which, based on values and knowledge, are functional and operative in the daily life of every boy, girl, youngster, and all people.
Education for citizen participation is the main route of access to the building of democracy. This education has two levels: explaining what is/should be education for citizen participation and democracy, where procedural mechanisms are taught; but also turning school or educational institutions into a space for living democracy daily, creating spaces for participation, dialogue, joint responsibility, etc.
By means of individuals interacting through the skills and knowledge obtained from the training currently needed, world societies can aspire to be truly democratic, and from that moment, establish the bases to develop better opportunities for everyone and achieve greater levels of economic, political, social and cultural prosperity.
The necessity of developing new formal and non-formal educational models strengthens the necessity that can no longer be deferred of training in democratic principles that become habits through which everyone can observe, analyse, reflect, question with critical criteria and interpret reality, and that of his/her equals, whether it is family, the immediate community, institutions, companies or the rest of society with which he/she interacts, and act accordingly.
Education today, regardless of the level or modality in question, must focus on the integrity and humanity of every person, that is, the way people conceive themselves as citizens who act in accordance with coexistent, civic, moral and democratic rules which guide their daily actions to live in freedom and without subordination, as well as to be educated and work in business and governmental fields or in civil society organisations.
Education for the transformation of societies into better societies demands educating future citizens conscientiously. It demands educating for freedom, autonomy, solidarity, sociability, reflection, critical thinking and judgment, dialogue and interpretation, the critical reading of mass media and everything that keeps people away from the strong temptation of perpetuating classist, exclusive, hierarchical, undignified and anti-democratic systems of belief and coexistence which lack equity and social justice.
We have had enough of educational models that divide, polarise and submit for the benefit of a high, privileged and tyrannical class. We, the citizens who have achieved higher levels of education, are responsible for allowing such errors and faults in educational models.
It is said that we are all involved in politics and it is not just hollow rhetoric; although nowadays many people think that the only people involved in politics are politicians, nothing could be further from the truth. Educational policy is also a responsibility of all of us, of each teacher or manager from school or university centres and of those civil society organisations which promote non-formal schemes.
Educational policy should be aimed at two vital axes: on the one hand, the structuring and consolidation of a democratic political system in each region or nation, and on the other, the training of new and better citizens who can actively get involved in each stage of their educational, moral and emotional life, and guarantee their conduct is also democratic.
We should promote democracy as a way of life, of coexistence and social cooperation within our increasingly complex and plural societies, and also as the most advisable form of government and path towards political, economic and social development. We should promote democracy as the best way to overcome the adverse situations facing current societies and future generations.
What we have said up to now frames the type of education needed for promoting citizen participation and establishes the main role it plays as a means of building democracy in current societies.
What is the profile of citizens who should be trained for present and future generations?
Below are some indications which are not thorough or complete, but intend to guide towards the identification of some distinctive features of citizens that will be trained under the formal or non-formal educational models previously mentioned.
Citizens trained under new educational models will be distinguished by their integrity, humanity and the following features:
- Free and autonomous due to the ability to use their intelligence and emotions, but at the same time cooperative and supportive with their equals.
- Capable of managing and making individual and collective decisions under a model of political and social coexistence based on democratic principles.
- Sensitive and duly informed that private interests (everything that accommodates the current economic model) should coexist harmonically with the interests of public life
- Sensitive and duly informed of both their fundamental rights and obligations, as well as the different mechanisms of citizen participation available, their scope and limits.
- Sensitive and duly informed of the issues of public life and understanding the political system of their local, regional and national environment.
- Convinced of the value of democracy as a way of life, social coexistence and government.
- Willing to reach agreements and resolve conflicts in a pacific way.
- Capable of discussing and interpreting situations of public life and getting involved in the decisions concerning aspects in which they want to influence.
- Capable of assuming joint responsibility in certain tasks of the state in which they want to have greater benefits through their involvement as an organised and active civil society in resolving problems or designing more efficient laws and public policies.
- With skills and knowledge to express themselves in a critical, pacific and respectful way through institutional channels, including those that correspond to civil society.
- With skills and knowledge to participate in the political system and to enforce their concerns and demands, as well as their own and collective interests.
- Capable of strengthening the democratic institutions acting in a responsible way as citizens, whether individually or collectively.
Number 2
All the qualities we have described in the previous section are part of the luggage of global citizenship. Some of the features of this concept can be seen on the cover of the current issue of the magazine. Once again, our friends of Ekilikua have summarised in a beautiful image one of the basic ideas of global and popular dimension. In this image we can see the planet posing in front of a group of painters. It is very interesting to see how each one of them makes a different interpretation of what they see.
Our group of artists is very diverse and assorted and so their interpretations are multiple and full of overflowing creativity. Something really descriptive can be derived from all of this: most paintings offer a lot more than what is apparent. The world in which we live is thus much more than the naked eye can see and certainly much more interesting than what we can even imagine.
Following this path, we discover that the development of the global dimension includes creativity as one of its basic exercises, understood as deepening in the diversity of our world, as well as in the surprise and joy that its potentialities produce. When we work on diversity with children focusing on creativity we provide them with a valuable defense against the pensée unique, the cultural colonialism (or of any other kind) and the fear of the different.
When we work on the global dimension, we all become artists, imagining the world we dream of or a planet inclusive to all. But we can also draw an image of what it is already and what is lacking to reach our ideal world. Following this path we thus become familiar with the knowledge of the world, its diversity and at the same time the lack of justice, in what refers to rights and care.
For this purpose, from the perspective of education for development we are at present working hard to create cooperation networks. These networks reflect diversity, seek justice and one of their main objectives is to generate enough creativity for our world to be an inclusive place. The articles in this issue (2) reflect this idea from different perspectives.
In the articles section, the four proposals included come from the Spanish state, but they only represent the tip of the iceberg of the cooperation spider’s webs throughout the planet.
The first article has been developed in the spider’s web of the university and is the result of asking what does critical practice for development mean? Research is developed around the university postgraduate course in which they are working and from that point the links with the fifth generation of Education for Development are studied, focusing on how both strengthen each other. The article provides interesting conclusions for reflection on essential learning and their consequences for carrying out experiences of this kind. The article is signed by Alejandra Boni, a reference in this area, Sergio Belda, Jordi Paris and Lucía Terol, all of them linked to the Máster Universitario en Cooperación al Desarrollo, [Master’s degree on Cooperation for Development] formerly known as Máster en Políticas y Procesos de Desarrollo [Master’s degree on Development Policies and Processes], given at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV) since 2007.
The second article comes from Paraguay and is related to the pedagogical dimensions of cooperation when we place communal transformation in the centre of the action carried out. The authors present the initiative of the Centro de Atención a la Comunidad (CAC), which is aimed at promoting human development focusing on the educational and social fields of the community. The objective of this article is to discover whether, considering the basic principles of research-action, their development design and process comply with a communal action model, which from their pedagogical theoretical framework is necessarily understood as socio-educational. This research, carried out by the consolidated research group PSITIC, from the Universitat Ramon Llull, and written by Ana López Murat and Jordi Longás Mayayo, provides some interesting answers concerning which may be the role of the assessment of cooperation projects in a pedagogical key.
The third article presents a very thick spider’s web represented by the Red Internacional de Educación para la Ciudadanía y la Transformación Social [International Network of Education for Citizenship and Social Change]. This network is composed of 10 social and educational organisations from seven countries: Novamérica (Brazil), Centro de Derechos y Desarrollo –CEDAL- (Peru), Fundación del Viso (Argentina), Fundación Pequeño Trabajador (Colombia), Centro de Derechos Humanos Victoria Díez (Mexico), Pronatura Sus, A.C. (Mexico), Centro Multiservicios Educativos (Mexico), CEMSE (Bolivia), Centro de Educación Alternativa Jaihuaco –CEPJA- (Bolivia), InteRed (Spain). In this article we will find a summarised version of broader research on how the concept of global citizenship is built, carried out also by Alejandra Boni Aristizábal, as well as Estela López Torrejón and Jadicha Sow Paino from GEDCE (Grupo de Estudios de Desarrollo, Cooperación y Ética Aplicada) of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and two independent researchers: Begoña Arias García and Monique Leivas Vargas. A project like this international network represents a direct experience of what we mentioned previously in the prelude of this chapter about living diversity. A really interesting article.
Finally, we include another network with an educational approach such as the one created by the project of Intermón Oxfam, Global Express. In this article, Georgina Casas carries out research on how the process of education for global citizenship is created. It is very interesting to see how the conclusions of the article show that the material contributes partially to the building of citizen skills. The author admits that Global Express allows pupils to have a more empathetic vision of reality and to understand certain global problems; but on the other hand, it does not achieve positive results when promoting the pupil’s skills to carry out actions for social change. This exercise of self-criticism and improvement in assessment is something that undoubtedly gives quality to the project and the article.
In the reviews section, we have also received four collaborations. The first concerns a book which brings us nearer to education for development in a postcolonial key, a significant trend led by Vanessa Andreotti and Lynn Mario T.M. de Souza: “Postcolonial perspectives on global citizenship education”. The commentary belongs to Miguel Ardanaz, from FERE-CECA Madrid and director of our magazine. Miguel sees in this publication a deepening into the third generation of Education for Development: i.e. critical education.
In the second article, Kevin Bailey, Headmaster of Hagley Primary School and member of TIDE, reviews the book “Civic education for diverse citizens in global times. Rethinking theory and practice” edited by Beth C. Rubin and James M. Giarelli. Kevin, from his perspective as Headmaster of a Primary School, offers an interesting view of the analyses concerning civic and citizens’ education.
In the section of international events, Iepala (Institute of Political Studies for Latin America, Asia and Africa) presents a synthesis of the “II Seminar International on Critical Education for Development Cooperation”. Many organisations and speakers were represented, all contributing significantly from their particular perspective. We would especially like to mention Oscar Jara, Rémy Herrera y Boaventura de Sousa Santos. It was undoubtedly an important and interesting encounter.
Finally, in the section of international documents, we include a comment on a document which is not really a document although it is becoming one because of its repercussion and impact. It is the document entitled “Finding Frames: new ways to engage the UK public in global poverty” of Andrew Darnton and Martin Kirk. This document is reviewed by Rodrigo Barahona, coordinator of the Educational programme for a Global Citizenship of Intermón Oxfam. Rodrigo describes how the report does not “prescribe” solutions based on the theory of values and the framework on which these are structured, but it does indicate various itineraries. In any case, we hope this interesting review encourages reading.
!!!Te recuerdo!!!.... 
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