The GCE Statement on the Occasion of International Day of Education (2022)

JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG, SOUTH AFRICA, January 24, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Changing Course, Transforming Education

#IDE2022 #EducationDay #InternationalDayOfEducation2022

As the Global Campaign to Education celebrates the fourth International Day of Education, we need to remember the ultimate purpose of education as a fundamental human right.

In recent decades, the world has seen significant progress in schooling processes, especially at the primary and secondary education levels. However, these achievements have not been universalised. Many regions and countries continue to suffer the brunt of inequality and inequity in school access, which has greatly been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, armed conflicts, and climate change.

The struggle to provide public education systems with adequate and predictable funding is central to sustaining progress in schooling and, even more so, to guarantee the right to education and lifelong learning. Indeed, the educational opportunities for early childhood and in general for youth and adults seriously contrast with the relative advances that have been achieved with other populations. Girls and women, especially those living in rural areas, people with disabilities, people affected by emergencies, LGBTQI+ communities, and migrants and refugees, are consistently excluded, discriminated against, and left behind by education policies.

The Global Campaign for Education continues to break the dramatic effects of this exclusion. It has added its voice to the demands for justice and solidarity raised by its entire membership in more than 110 countries. On the International Day of Education, this fight takes on greater significance and is a reason to renew these efforts.

Advances in schooling have not been followed by improved education quality or efficiency so that educational content meets the aims set by the international human rights law. On the contrary, we observe a severe deterioration of learning processes: there are more children in the classroom, but they do not necessarily learn well or what they should. The curricular and didactic weakening has many causes, for which it is inadmissible that teachers be pointed out as those responsible for the learning crisis.

The Global Campaign for Education is concerned about the utilitarian turn of education policies that, due to corporate pressure, have emptied the curriculum of essential contents to give way primarily to the development of pseudo-pragmatic skills of a market-driven syllabus effect “building human capital.” Education must go beyond responding to the market's needs and should offer people a wide range of knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve their potential and live decent lives.

These utilitarian tendencies cannot change the social and political structures that fuel inequality and oppression. For this reason, the Global Campaign for Education reaffirms its conviction about the transformative nature of education, as set by the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Transforming education needs, above all, that education be transformative!

The holistic approach to learning, in which philosophy, art, music, and human rights are central, also strengthens people's productive skills while building values of people-to-people solidarity and empathy to build complete and happy lives.

Education must be transformative by nature. Transformation is not a mission that can be added artificially to education as a fashion or a casual trend. Knowledge is socially meaningful only when it dismantles injustice, exclusion, and violence.

The Global Campaign for Education calls on States to deal with the contents of education to advance the eradicating of hate, prejudice, racism, xenophobia, sexism, and all forms of violence, exclusion, and discrimination. For this, public policies must be promoted to implement human rights education, comprehensive sexuality education, and structural changes in which scientific and technical education coexist and feed on artistic, philosophical, and socio-community education.

None of this will be possible if governments do not comply with all of their education-related obligations, including the provision of a progressive budget to free public education systems and if increasing opportunities for training and support are not offered to teachers, who should always be part of decision making.

The Global Campaign for Education celebrates the International Day of Education with joy and hope and pays tribute to Paulo Freire, whose ideas inspired the path of liberation through education.

End

Philani Ndebele
Global Campaign for Education
+27 64 045 8191
philani@campaignforeducation.org
Visit us on social media:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn