PROUT Editor's note: The article below presents some truly unique and exciting topics that should be included in every child's educational curriculum. For example, young students should know how to produce newspaper articles and videos for purposes of media work. Attending conferences and workshops in other parts of the country should also be a part of children's education. The World Education Platform promotes "emancipatory" quality universal education, closely resembling the Neo-Humanist education of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, which emphasizes physical, intellectual and spiritual elevation and liberation and the attitude that no one should be left behind on this sublime journey. If a person stumbles and falls on this path, others must run back to pick him up and carry him forward. The World Education Platform further calls for a global fight for gender equality, a concept also supported by Sarkar in His call for the liberation of all women from the shackles of male abuse, oppression and chauvinism. Perhaps the most exciting concept is Professor Marcelo Rezende's demand that human rights and civil disobedience be taught in all schools. To introduce human rights and civil disobedience in all school curricula every year through the end of university studies would create a total revolution in the mindset of populations globally, and would propel people in the direction of implementation of the term 'Sadvipra,' which means fanatically ensconced in love for the Supreme Entity while simultaneously loving His manifestations to such an extent as to fight against all injustices and tortures done to those manifestations. This is a revolutionary concept that must be implemented in schools everywhere, as soon as possible.
EDUCATION
Mario Osava
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jul 31 (IPS) - The World Education Forum (WEF), which ended Saturday in this southern Brazilian city, put into practice one of the guidelines included in its final document: giving young people a greater role in the production of knowledge.
The journalistic coverage of this year's WEF was carried out by 96 students from 27 public schools in the city of Porto Alegre. ''We are producing reports for community radio stations, newspapers, videos and the Internet,'' 14-year-old Maximiliano Franco, an eighth-grader, told IPS.
Franco has been doing interviews for radio. ''I learned a lot. I had never done this before,'' he said.
Another eighth-grader, Pamela Cristina dos Santos, 13, has been writing reports for an on-line and print daily newspaper. ''We learned more than we do in class, attending the conferences, talking to people, meeting other people,'' she said.
Providing incentives for giving children and adolescents a greater role in generating knowledge was just one of 16 guidelines laid out in the World Education Platform, aimed at promoting ''emancipatory'' quality universal education at all levels, free of charge, on the understanding that guaranteeing funding is the state's obligation.
Other basic principles contained in the final document approved by the third annual edition of WEF were defending public education as a human right and rejecting the commercialisation of education.
The educators who met for four days in Porto Alegre also underscored their rejection of national and international agreements that treat education as a commodity, as well as ''structural adjustment programmes that pressure governments'' to cut social spending.
In addition, the document calls for a global mobilisation to fight for gender equality and an end to discrimination of all kinds in schools, the democratisation of the administration of educational institutions, and greater recognition of education workers.
WEF, which has been held every year since 2001 in Porto Alegre, the capital of the state of Río Grande do Sul, drew more than 22,000 participants from 48 countries to this year's edition.
'Education for Another World' was the general theme at the forum, debated in three conferences, five ''thematic debates'' and 79 ''self-managed activities'', including seminars, workshops and panels.
The World Education Platform is a ''provisional'' document, because it is still in construction, said Bernard Charlot from France, one of the 29 members of the WEF international council.
The forum is facing three major challenges in the immediate future, Charlot said in the closing ceremony: forging a closer link with the World Social Forum (WSF); becoming a truly global movement; and ''going beyond mere discourse'' to move on from the affirmation of principles to following a platform of struggle.
WEF was born in October 2001 in Porto Alegre, which is also the birthplace of the WSF, held in opposition to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The theme of the WSF annual gathering of civil society is 'Another World Is Possible'.
So far WEF has been ''very American and Brazilian'' and it should be held in Africa and Asia as well to become a truly global phenomenon, said Charlot. But neither the venue nor date of the next edition have been set yet by the international council.
Furthermore, Porto Alegre ''wants the forum to stay here,'' said Francisco Rodríguez, a local teacher who coordinated the organisation of this year's forum.
In the last conference of the forum, on 'Solidarity, Democracy and Peace', Bernard Cassen of France, the director of the newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique and a member of the WSF international council, underlined the need to salvage the meaning of these terms and others whose significance has been distorted or negated by neo-liberal thinking, which he called ''a virus'' that ''has infected people's minds.''
''Knowledge workers'' like educators and intellectuals, should ''tear down the ideological defences of neo-liberalism'' as their contribution to making ''another world possible'', said Cassen.
''Solidarity does not exist in the neo-liberal vocabulary,'' which only recognises individuals, and ''destroys the idea of society,'' exalting individual fortunes and reducing life to consumption and consumerism, said Cassen.
Democracy has been sacrificed on the altar of the economy and finances, and peace is sought through war in neo-liberal thinking. It is thus always in need of an enemy, which today is terrorism, the successor to communism and the Soviet bloc, he argued.
In another WEF event, Hugo Rodríguez from Uruguay drew attention to ''the risk'' posed by words. Some dictatorships in Latin America took power under the pretext of restoring democracy, and the insistence on referring to education as ''an investment'' rather than an expense led to the current obsession with ''measuring the profitability'' and cost-effectiveness of education, he said.
In the past, schools educated for solidarity, and now they educate to make people ''competitive'', having undergone a complete change of values, he complained.
Schools must also teach human rights and civil disobedience, like how to organise demonstrations, said Marcelo Rezende, a professor of pedagogy from a university in Porto Alegre.
In his view, there are already signs of ''another world'' in the massive marches and peace movements, the forums that are becoming more and more numerous, and the campaigns for disarmament. (END/2004
