Submitted by Sylviane Amiet on 29/11/15 – 19:54

TOPIC RIDEF 2016 : CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION FOR A PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY.

The construction of a different world is possible from an education that is able to undergo a transformation. To do this, we must promote from school an education for global and planetary citizenship within the framework of continuing education.
It is an education that will contribute to the training of citizens responsible and engaged for justice and sustainability of the planet. A system that teaches respect and values diversity as a source of human enrichment,a system that teaches the defense of the environment and responsible consumption, respect for individual and collective human rights, gender parity, dialogue as a tool to the peaceful resolution of conflicts, participation, responsibility and commitment for a more just and united society.
The school may have a central role in adjusting a new development model quarreling neoliberalism and the commodification of education model.
It must promote a critical analysis of the media and the rules that govern the global communication system.
To do so, it must establish a common public ethics and learn to live in a world and in fast changing societies, intercultural, where human groups travel, emigrate, escape situations of violence and war, know how to live and practice inclusion and social cohesion and not marginalization and discrimination.
Still, we must teach in school to balance the conquests technical and technological progress with an ethical serving people and planet and not in a wild plan to conquer the world.
One half of the world must learn to change their lifestyle and consumption patterns not benevolence toward the other half "poor", but because it is in the process of exhausting the resources of everyone.
We need an active and cooperative teaching that does not separate science and technology of those human and social knowledge.
A school organization that is not isolated and separated from the context of life but knows how to work in the community, build networks and collaborations for a school opened to the world.
The books and the only texts, lessons ex cathedra are not used to improve learning, it is necessary that each feel responsible for his knowledge and acquired knowledge of others and must have different and diverse working tools (libraries, workshops, equipment ...). In this context, the school must promote the humanistic and global dimension of education by promoting the values ​​of solidarity, peace, recognition of the other, justice, equality, attention in the world health. This will involve a comprehensive education that conceives human beings from an integral perspective, that is to say, based on human dignity, promoting human rights, on deep relationships withinthe local and the global level, on interculturality, on the challenge of democracy and dialogue, on the relationship between the emotions of people and knowledge. Knowledge, taken in this way, comes from a collective construction,that values the knowledge of all.
The role of the school will now be to establish a consistency between practices and values, which is not limited to statements but their implementation. The school's mission is to install a democratic, participatory and opened school management, that engages all participants. An educational system that uses active methodologies and practices that put students at the center of the learning process.
From all the above, a nation that wants a harmonious development, needs to adopt such an education, so it is important for the state to be committed to it and provides resources for the training of citizens engaged in participatory democracy.