PORTO ALEGRE (Brazil): Public education for all, financed by the state and not seen as a merchandise or service but aimed at building a democratic, egalitarian society with solidarity was the key demand set forth by the World Education Forum, in Brazil.

The proposals discussed by 17,000 educators, researchers, students, politicians, trade unionists and social activists meeting in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre were summed up in a draft Charter that will continue to be debated over the Internet.

The gathering, attended by delegates from five continents, forms part of a process opened in this Brazilian city in January by the World Social Forum, which drew together leftist political groupings and civil society organisations from around the world, with the aim of showing that “another world is possible.”

In one of the speeches that drew the most resounding applause at the Wednesday through Saturday Forum, French pedagogue Bernard Charlot said that what was needed was a new network, not based on capital, but on solidarity and respect for cultural differences and the uniqueness of each individual.

Charlot said the biggest difficulty was to define what culture is to be respected, in order to avoid the danger of limiting people to outdated visions that are incapable of explaining today’s world or so closed in on themselves that they provoke intolerance.

The information society, a product of the new communication technologies, has negative effects, said Charlot. On one hand, it imposes standards of industrial productivity on schools, while merely transmitting information without teaching youngsters “knowledge”, which signifies questioning the meaning of things.

The “Charter of Educational Cities”, signed in Barcelona in 1990, suggests a new right of citizens: to build alternative cities together. The movement has already spread to 228 cities in various regions of the world.

The movement’s success is based on a pooling of information and experiences by cities and governments, each of which assumes its responsibilities, while acting as accomplices in the construction of a happier city, with a stronger sense of solidarity. —Dawn/InterPress Service.