Miguel Argibay, Juanjo Celorio and Gema Celorio have formed part of the team of Education for the Development of Hegoa since 1988. During this time their desire to contribute to the expansion of critical and emancipating education has lead them to undertake various studies; to hold multiple training courses, seminars and open days; to write theoretical and educational publications; to coordinate programmes orientated towards the scope of formal education (Mundilab) and to participate in local and international networks (Amanda, Mosaiko, Polygone). With the drive to share discussions and learning with other organisations and social movements they organised 3 Education for Development Congresses (1990, 1996 and 2006).
Contact: Instituto Hegoa, Apdo. 138 – Nieves Cano, 33, 01006 Vitoria-Gasteiz, País Vasco, España. gema_celorio@ehu.es
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Fourteen years ago, in 1997, within a series of monographs from Hegoa Cuadernos de Trabajo – Lan Koadernoak, “Educación para el Desarrollo. El espacio olvidado de la cooperación” was published. Seven years had passed since the I Congreso de Educación para el Desarrollo (I Congress on Development Education, 1990) and one since its second edition (1996), a time in which great collective effort was undertaken to reflect on solidarity and education in order to generate a theoretical framework and propose strategic lines of action in these areas. In fact, the 1990s was decisive in driving DE programmes and experiences promoted by NGDOs, groups of educators, teachers and Educational Reform Movements all across Spain. It was, therefore, in a publication released at the end of the decade where DE started to emerge with force, to strengthen its identity and function both within cooperation and within the educational community.
As a result of this boom in DE, we dared to point out, in this article, some of the notable contradictions present in teaching content and methods across all levels of education, in the creation of critical awareness, as well as in the strategic lines of cooperation and solidarity, both locally and internationally.
The title suggests that Development Education – as well as being a specific field of action and going beyond cooperation in the education sector- is, in itself, cooperation. We start of from the still valid conviction that it is impossible to improve the situation of impoverished countries if changes are not made in our rich northern societies. It is impossible to promote human development, peace, or facilitate gender equality or cultural relations, by only attempting to make changes in the South, without criticising the dominant socio-economic model and without structuring education based on human rights and solidarity. This is the reason for which, within the idea of cooperation, DE requests the same consideration and importance that is given to works in southern countries.
However, as also reflected in the title, DE was, and continues to be, a line of undervalued cooperation, with weak financing and scarcely considered in terms of education and training, to be worthy of strategical institutional public policy.
The concept announced in the title and which is developed throughout the monograph, is not a product of causality, but one of context, of the hegemony of liberalism, of the concentration of capital in a small proportion of the population and the impoverishment of the majority, as demonstrated in the UNDP Human Development Reports. The context of the 1990s creates a whole range of contradictions and issues that question the world about solidarity, cooperation and also education.
Discourse on the triumph of capitalism was gaining in intensity, therefore to achieve increased growth and development demands are made on the role of economic agents, policies on the intensification of industrial and commercial growth -with the support of new technologies – and reduction of the role of the state in public and social policies.
At that time, we found a highly contradictory situation regarding education. At the start of the decade, education reform (LOGSE, 1990) focussed on the decentralization of the curriculum, granted content status to procedures and values and recognised the social impact of education by pointing out the need for transversal lines in the curriculum. The coincidence of the 1990s Reform with the I DE Congress created significant expectations in the proposal of mainstreaming to promote DE in the curricula. On the other hand, we saw a glimpse of the opposite trend in the II Congress in 1996: restrictions and limitations on transversal lines in formal education, the focus on technical training to the detriment of the humanities, to training in values, to teaching on responsible participation. DE made intensified efforts in informal education, contributing to education on solidarity and to strengthening basic democracy, whilst it criticised theoretical contradictions and policies present in LOGSE and in educational institutions.
The workbooks that we create today descend from this set of contradictory trends. Within, an attempt was made to restore relations between different development models using the paradigms created by Guy Bajoit, which facilitate understanding of the various dominant development models and their historical evolution, and they are very useful in understanding the process of cooperation, of Development Education and the various ideas lie beneath the work of the NGDOs. Development, participative democracy and education are the primary benchmarks of a DE that trusts, on the one hand, in the role that education can play as an alternative contribution to dominant development, and on the other, in the support that alliances between the various agents and the processes derived from their actions can mean for social transformation. DE is classed as a tool for critical reflection and for the construction of other development models in the spirit of social justice; other participation processes and democratic intervention; another role for the communication, culture, science and technology made available, at that point, for the well-being of the people and useful for the resolution of the problems faced by humanity. Consider Education as a human right, a common good that should be protected and should never be transformed into merchandise within the reach of a limited proportion of the population.
Did the publication have an impact? Was it useful at the time? It is not something that we should judge. We have theorised and promoted two new generations, that of Human Development and of Global Citizenry. New proposals have been made, Local Human Development, Sumak Kawsay (Good Living), Decrease… In the field of education, experiences have arisen that tend to break the barriers between formal and informal: learning communities, learning-service, environment plans, community education, educating cities, socio-educational networks, etc. However, the sad result is that the dangers, discussed within, have virulently become reality. The crisis increases inequality within each State and structural adjustment plans threaten to plunge the majority of humanity into poverty. Today, fourteen years on, public funds are dedicated to support private banking and the most drastic cuts are recorded in the social field, education, health, individual and collective rights, and, of course, local and international solidarity. The need to construct a strategy alternative to rampant neoliberalism in the relation between Development and Education is still applicable and has already been raised and opened to debate in this publication.
