Against educational inequality, a public education for emancipation

In the context of the greater vulnerability to which we are exposed in the midst of the global pandemic and the systemic crisis, free and universal public education is at risk. The abrupt shift to distance and/or online modalities, (combined in some countries with hybrid online/face-to-face classes)  have a significant impact on learning conditions and the health and working conditions of education workers.

The technological platforms and resources provided for distance learning are largely defined by large corporations. The abrupt shift to online platforms forces teachers to resort to commercial options as a strategy to provide follow-up and attention to their students. Students have attempted to access this virtual education process, but there is unequal access to hardware, software, internet and data. To access public education, both education workers and students and their families need to spend on electronic devices, internet service and data.

As long as we pay for technological tools and resources, and corporations continue to define the delivery and content of education, free and universal public education is at risk. We cannot allow the inequity and exclusion in education to deepen even further.

To defend the right to education as a victory achieved by social struggles throughout the Americas, we launch this campaign as a call to our peoples to recover the universal, public and free nature of education, and place its emancipatory character at the center as a way to build new realities.

The IDEA Network invites all those organizations and individuals concerned about the future of public education to get involved in this hemispheric campaign. For more information on the campaign, times and terms of participation please contact us at: inforedsepa@resist.ca

Objective: 

• Weaving networks, building alliances and collective actions that set a horizon for the defense and transformation of the public education our peoples need.

At this historical moment in which we’re facing the danger of an educative privatization imposed by the power of the large transnational corporations of information and communication, exacerbating the inequality that affects the exercise of the right to universal and free access to education for the construction of democratic societies and the emancipation of men and women. 

Axes of struggle:

• 

Participation of the society and education workers and their organizations in decision-making for the transformations that education systems required to build a scientific, humanistic, critical education that contributes to solve the big problems of our peoples.

Regulation, definition of necessary norms and state actions to make social decisions about technologies, because individual boycotts does not reach to modify the concentration of information processes it is indispensable the surveillance and control of the transnational of information and communication. Demand the State to guarantee the right of privacy and limit corporations’ power to dispose of our data.

Internet as a right for our peoples / Internet as a public Good for our peoples

Technology in education is inequitable in itself. It is required to attend inequity guaranteeing the universal and free access to the NTICs. Internet access as a public good.

Dignified working conditions, no to the intensification or extension of the working day, reduced groups. Guarantee of healthy conditions in the schools and universal vaccine for education workers for the going back to face-to-face classes. 

Deepen the research and build the dialogue between organizations, students, and teachers participating in the campaign in two key themes: 1) The impact of Technologies of Information and Communication within pedagogical work 2) The elaboration of alternative educational proposals, at the historical moment we’re living, incorporating the experiences developed by teachers and their union and social organizations throughout the hemisphere. 

Actions

Workshops, seminars, Regional Conferences, magazine edition, posters, presentation of a manifesto to the press and to the education ministries of the different countries in the hemisphere, realization of a Continental Education Forum. 

¡Against educational inequity, an emancipatory education!

¡Public Internet for everyone, public Good for students, teachers, and peoples!