International Conference on Education

Workshop 2A. 8 September 2004

Quality Education and Social Inclusion

The theme that was examined was the concept of exclusion, mainly because of the lack of competencies and control of essential knowledge to achieve autonomy, and the risks of exclusion themselves in terms of poverty, nutrition, health and education.

The role of the two main actors in the environment of the learner was identified as follows:
- The school, as educative agent for the values of social inclusion. It was noted that the values transmitted by the school were different from those formulated by society, especially via the media. It was stressed that the formation of alliances between the educative world and the media was needed in order to avoid teaching contradictory values. It was also mentioned the need to promote policies so that schooling occurs with as much equity as possible.
- The teacher, who must have the adequate training to take into consideration the moral, ethical and traditional issues and integrate them in the current context of the ICT.

Proposals consisted in:
- Developing solutions so that new media of communication and their content become reliable sources to be used for an inclusive and quality education,
- Evolve towards a model of educative system that guaranties and fosters, through positive actions, public, free, integrative and laic education, that teaches democratic values and carries notions of social inclusion,
- Revise the contents on diversity the teachers have to acquire,
- Encourage the countries to create a fund to assure the right to education for all and in particular literacy, nutrition, health and primary and secondary education,
- Grant funds to connect to the Internet all the schools, especially in the rural zones.