It was under of the common understanding among the participants of the International Democratic Education Conference that education is a right that all people should have access to, that Ana María Careaga offered her presentation at the conference yesterday.

She is a human rights activist, who carries out research and educates others on the consequences of state terrorism in Argentina. Careaga is the executive director of the Instituto Espacio para la Memoria (Space for Memory Institute), an entity in Buenos Aires that coordinates the collaboration of civil society organizations with the State and is responsible for disseminating public policy on memory and human rights.

How to educate for human rights is too broad a question. Careaga chose to approach it in terms of her experience at the Institute. She told the story of Melincué, a small province in Santa Fe where two unidentified tombstones became the beginning of this story of solidarity and are now the protagonists in human rights master classes.

“The most terrible is learned at once and the beautiful takes our life”. – Silvio Rodríguez, Canción del elegido (Song of the chosen one).

In Argentina, military coupes alternated with democracies in the XX Century; there were six coupes, in: 1930, 1943, 1955, 1962, 1966 and 1976. The last one, which lasted seven years, imposed a cruel regime of state terrorism in which human rights were extensively violated and more than 30 thousand people were murdered. More than 500 clandestine concentration camps were identified. There were forced disappearances, political prisoners, exiles, thousands detained, the missing were murdered. Aberrant crimes that were repeated throughout the entire country, Careaga explained. At the same time, the social circumstances that the country had to confront on its way to reconstruction following the military dictatorship were terrible. There were vast pockets of poverty and social exclusion from basic rights, including those of housing, health to education. This, aside from the silence, impunity and pain.

The story of Melincué is placed in the midst of that process of Argentine recovery. As professor in the town and her students had committed to identify, with a group of scientists, two bodies that had been buried in a local cemetery as NN (no name). The collective recovery of the remains of Cristina Cialceta, 22 year-old Mexican, and Yves Domergue, 23 year-old from France, who had both disappeared in September of 1976, led to the restoration of their identities in May 2010. The couple had been detained and had disappeared 36 years earlier. It is the story of the recovery of history, of commitment and of solidarity, in which a community of two thousand inhabitants chose not be indifferent in the face of horror.

“That generation, although they did not live through the dictatorship, was also affected by it, because the repression was to implement these economic models that have caused so much damage”, Careaga stated. “They exhumed the bodies, were able to take DNA from the body and identify these two people. When they were able to reinstate their names, the students made a huge placard that said: “We have come to tell you that it was worth it”.

“To be a teacher is not a simple task, but it is beautiful, it fills the soul”. - Juliana Cagrandi, Professor in Melincué

“This experience, of the school in Melincué, signifies a profound change for people. It can be considered a process of alternative education. It is about a different reality than official history. These youths were writing a true story. That has great value,” Careaga reflected.

Following her poignant presentation, Careaga decided to strike a conversation with the audience. Lilly Zeller spoke: “What happened in Argentina could happen anywhere. We think that it happens to others, but that it can’t happen to us. It could happen to us as well. When I went to Argentina to live for a while, I will never forget that when I arrived I saw some beautiful buildings. Then, everything changed when I read and came to know of the pain and the tragedy that the Argentine people had lived there. Forgetting is forbidden”.

Careaga reacted at once. She explained that the Mechanics School of the Armed Forces (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada), that beautiful building that Zeller was referring to, was a concentration camp known as Cuatro Columnas (Four Columns). She added: “Terror can take the shape of a dictatorship, or of war, but it can also happen in other much more subtle ways: military bases, soft immersion strategies. Domination strategies that profoundly wound societies”.

José Santiago, a young Puerto Rican historian, attested to having lived repression by the State. “Police officers like dogs, assaulting students, parents and teachers during the strike at the University. I’m worried that what has happened in Puerto Rico may be the preamble to the terror lived in Argentina”. Careaga recommended that he looked up the precedents in the history of state terrorism, some of them compiled in publications for the Institute, where complex matters such as dominant economic groups and how the other, the enemy and the subversive are constructed in a process of repression.

The scenario depicted could not have been any bleaker. In his lecture today at the 20th International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC 2012), the former Secretary of Education in Puerto Rico, Dr. César Rey, offered a statistical radiography of the Country. It was devastating. The discussion that ensued, however, was profound and moving.

Puerto Rico was a 49% of dependency on state welfare, he started. “I do not think, that there is another country in the whole world with a (level) of subsidies as high as ours”. Among minors, 56% lives below the poverty line. This number is three times higher than in the United States, the sociologist and professor emphasized. Only 33% of the total labor force is active.

Although it is claimed that unemployment is at 17%, a conservative estimate by Estudios Técnicos (an economics think tank and consultancy firm) reveals the real number to be close to 30%. For every dollar, 28 cents come from the informal economy. Around 300 thousand people, primarily educated have left the country in the past ten years and 43% of those who stayed have thought about leaving in the next two years.

In turn, while the State invests approximately 4,000 dollars for every student in the public education system, it invests nearly $90,000 for each maximum security prisoner. “This country is unique. I ask you: don’t you think that these are signs of significant violence?” In many places, “the local drug dealer has more power to summon people than the teacher”.

It is true that we need to build an education that stems from the country itself, he emphasized. “And that is a stepwise process and it requires research. It also requires a horizontal outlook and that is difficult because it presupposes de-codifying ourselves as the managers of an educational project. It is a difficult process, but also a courageous one. It implies a lot of maturity.” All of this must be done and it is important. He also spoke of many other things that must be done, such as teaching and encouraging entrepreneurship from middle school onwards. However, he argued, what students experience in the classroom is something very different to their lives at home.

Following the Twin Towers tragedy in 2001, Dr. Rey attended an educational project about the violence of terrorism. They spoke with many students. He remembers perfectly the answer from a teenage girl who was asked what she thought about that violence.

“For me, violence is to have to pass by three drug sales points every day to reach school”, the girl said. “And I am embarrassed that my grandmother has to bring me to school every day”.

More recently, while carrying out interviews for research on the drug trade in Puerto Rico, a student leader from his school revealed: “There are two drug sales points in the school’s staircase and we have to consult them about everything that we want to do in the clubs”.

The worst statistic is perhaps the following: the Department of Education’s budget in Puerto Rico is over $4,500 million annually for a total of 1,435 public schools. Notwithstanding, there are nearly 1,600 drug sales points in the country that, paradoxically, generate more than 4,000 million dollars. “There are more drug sales points than schools”, Rey stated.

As a matter of fact, in more than 80 percent of these there is a minor present. “They are the ‘gate keepers’”, Rey points out. “They wear a (school) uniform although they don’t go to class. And that is an example of all the things we make invisible when we speak about education”.

Mónica Fernández, an academic at the University of Quilmes in Argentina, who was among the participants, intervened inviting others to reflect on the following: “Education is vital, it is very important. But it is not everything in life. Drug makes us not feel cold, not feel hungry, not to feel fear. That, perhaps, answers why so many prefer it to education. What can we do with this contradictory message?”

She added that at times she questions whether one should start to think about the body before the mind. What are the inalienable needs of the body? Which practices and exercises could never be eradicated? How can we avoid drugs destroying a society, without aiming for the impossibility of eradicating it?

Definitely, Professor Rey replied, we should also examine illegality and all other alternate forms of governance. “In the School of Public Administration, where I teach, there is not yet a single course on that topic in the curriculum. It must be created”.

It seemed like a simple question was left floating in the air as the conference room was emptied. (Who will that expert on illegality that can offer it be?)

Yaccov Hetch knew that the logic of that discourse was devastating. His father, visibly distressed, had told him so in front of the principal of the school that Yaccov, then 16 years old, was determined to leave. “If you leave school you are going to destroy your life”, he had said.

It was very likely that he would turn out to be right. “But I thought to myself: ‘the only thing that I do know is that I am going to destroy my life if I stay in this place”. That is how Yaccov Hecht, a 64 year-old Israeli who many consider to be the founder of democratic education, tells his story. He is now in Puerto Rico offering a talk about that topic at the International Democratic Education Conference, IDEC 2012.

His journey through the school had been unfortunate. “I started to read and write in the seventh grade!” he states. “But imagine: someone is teaching you English, when you still don’t know Hebrew. I would sit in class and I did not understand anything”. That was why he made that decision to leave school at sixteen years of age. “I did not understand why I had to be there”.

He did not really drop out of school. Although Yaccov did as a matter of fact leave the school, at the same time he started to reflect profoundly about education. “From sixteen years of age up to now I have been thinking about what the school is and what it should be”.

En 1987, Yaccov founded the Democratic School of Hadera, in Israel, the first in the world with this philosophy. The idea was not only to get students involved and participating in decision-making in his school. Each one should also be treated as a different and unique person. “The (traditional) school cannot cope with the fact that we are all different. They make a small square and they expect to fit all of their students inside it. But life in that square feels uncomfortable, it’s crammed! They want to divide you into three categories: deficient, average or excellent. It’s a joke! You are excellent inside of the square? The goal of democratic education is to change that, so that people can be excellent in everything in which they can be excellent”.

Following the foundation of that first school, the waiting list grew so quickly that soon there were more than 3 thousand children trying to join the school. Yaccov decided that he had to do something, given that the majority of those students would never get into the school at Hadera. “So, I told them that I would help them to make their own democratic school and did so”. At present, there are 26 democratic schools in Israel. “They are all different, but they are democratic”.

Yaccov went on thinking and one day he told himself: “We should change all of the educational system in Israel. To make it all democratic”.

There are already ten Learning Cities in that country, as the government of Israel has over time become interested in democratic education. Yaccov, in turn, has become a national figure in the field of education. At present, 10% of public schools are in the process of democratization.

“And even now, I still do not know how to read or write well”, jokes Hecht.

Twenty (20) years ago, this leader called for the first International Democratic Education Conference, known today as IDEC. “I called the conference because I felt alone in this, and I was somewhat fearful of feeling that way”.

The meeting also grew dramatically. Each year more supporters joined in and succeeded in ensuring that democratic education became an international concept. The twentieth edition of IDEC is taking place this week in Caguas, Puerto Rico. Yaccov Hecht and other founders of democratic education, such as Ian Cunningham, Amukta Mahapatra, Jerry Mintz and Derry Hannam, will be participating in the conference.

“I wanted to learn but I didn’t like to be told what I had to do”.

How many of us haven’t thought same thing at some point in our school life? Ian Cunningham’s insatisfaction, however, made him take a step further. Born in England, Cunningham is one of the founders of the modern democratic education movement. Six of the founders participated in opening plenary for the XXth Internacional Democratic Conference (IDEC 2012) in Caguas, Puerto Rico, moderated by Juan Luis Díaz Cotto from Sor Isolina Ferré Centers.

In 1963, Cunningham founded the School for Independent Study, where students worked in groups and could then do what they wanted the rest of the time. There, they lived together, they confronted their needs and they made their decisions. “For me, that’s democracy. When make choices and share with other people, those are more important options”.

These days Cunningham works with organizations in several fields, such as: organizational change, strategy and team development, and training for managers and directors. He also researches, writes and organizes self-managed learning programs. “The decisions that matter are those that we make to share them. When democracy is there to serve the community, there is freedom”, the presenter stated.

Also from England, Derry Hannam has worked in the country’s state school system. He believes that children’s capacity to learn is infinite. “Children cannot be forced. Students’ motivation cannot be the fear of failure. The school does that; it promotes the fear of failure. We must support children’s passion for learning”.

According to Hannam, students must be able to undertake their own initiatives, “…to learn of responsibility by participating in the school’s governance. We must have two principles: the passion for learning and participation”. It is in this context that he highlights the importance of student organizations in the democratic education movement. “It is difficult to achieve democratic education in the state system, but democratic schools have better results. Democratic schools are happier, centered in in the student”. He concluded his presentation by expressing his gratitude the opportunity to visit Puerto Rico and his support to Nuestra Escuela.

Many attribute the beginning of the movement to Israeli Yaccov Hetch, who described his own path towards democratic education. “My story with schools started at 6 years old when they told me that I was going to school and I discovered that I did not know what I was going to do. In the sixth grade I didn’t know how to read or write, and in the tenth grade I abandoned school. At sixteen I was outside of the education system. I suffered a lot. At twenty-seven, I decided to make a new school. The basic idea: I decided to build a school that reflected life outside of school”. In 1987 he founded the Democratic School of Hadera, which came to have such a long waiting list that at a certain point Yaccov had to start training communities to create their own democratic schools.

Democratic education became a movement once they decided to create IDEC. There were 27 people in the first international meeting. “That first conference was called the Democratic Schools Conference and is now the International Democratic Education Conference. IDEC was the driving force that changed the movement”.

In his presentation he showed a diagram of a social piramid, as he espoused his view that education is no longer sustainable at this point. According to Hetch, those that are on top of the piramid evolve more quickly; 1% of the population controls 99% of society. “A democratic world needs a democratic education”, he said. “People believe that democracy is to vote, but democracy is much more than that. It is a culture that believes in human beings and it must be undertaken through democratic education”.

Amukta Mahapatra, founder of the Mandara Resources Center for teacher training in the practices of alternative education in India, also participated in the plenary. “It is important to highlight that there are heroes in our backyards”, she said. Public servants, teachers and workers, should all be supported to be continuously creative. “The change should be led by a group, not by one person. I like to hear that in Puerto Rico there is an (alternative education) alliance.” Finally, Mahapatra added: “It is not about imposing a change either, but rather to infiltrate it, so that it is sustained, so that it flows like underground water”.

Kageki Asakura, founder of democratic schools in Japan, argued that “everyone thinks that Japan has a good educational system and the fact is that we do not. Education in Japan is effective, but students suffer in an extremely competitive atmosphere”.

Students are increasingly involved in violence and there is widespread bullying as a consequence of this atmosphere, he explained. According to Asakura, nearly 250 thousand students in Japan do not want to go to school. “In the mid 1980’s we developed democratic schools. We now have more than 200 of them. In democratic schools every child has the right to decide and this is strongly linked with self-esteem”.

Scott Nine, Executive Director of IDEA and organizer of IDEC 2012

It’s hard not to be inspired by the beautiful nature and warmth of Puerto Rico. Undoubtedly, for the international participants, these are two good reasons to come to the Island for the International Democratic Education Conference in March of 2012. But that is very far from everything Puerto Rico has to offer IDEC.

For Scott Nine, Executive Director of IDEA who has been in Puerto Rico since September helping in the organization of the Conference, the fact that it is been held in this country for the first time, offers an “opportunity to change the conversation”.

These are very volatile, challenging times, with big transformations in many aspects including the education areas. These changes are going on fast and simultaneously. The standardization of the tests is been highly questioned as well as the pertinence of traditional education. Economies and ecologies seem to collapse, jobs are been transformed in a highly accelerated rhythm.

“It’s a very uncertain time”, says Nine. “This conference has the opportunity to change the conversation, establish a new level of discussion. In many senses, this might be the perfect place. The political and historical situation of Puerto Rico, its political dynamics… Being part of the United States, it is at the same time a country in its very own ways. Puerto Rico permits that connection between North America and the Latin American countries. It is a bridge. Besides, the idea of liberation and democratic education is directly tied with the future of Puerto Rico, regardless of whether you’re pro-statehood or pro-independence. Conflict provokes an awakening, it provokes change. As Paulo Freyre said it, ‘conflict is the midwife of consciousness’. It is very possible that the conference itself will offer something for Puerto Rico”.

In the case of the Puerto Rican archipelago, remembers Nine, the analysis of its centralized learning system is also interesting. “Here, you have only one Board for one million students and 4 million citizens”.

Democratic education is a conversation that has started but is still very far from an end, if there will ever be one. It is a concept in frank evolution.

In the new world scenery, adds Nine, it is vital to provoke students to ask themselves the two key questions, as earlier as possible: Who am I? What do I want to make of my life? “But right now, the majority of students are in a classroom, doing what others are telling them to do”.

The International Democratic Education Conference is inaugurated in Caguas, Puerto Rico

The educational ideas that the now deceased mayor William Miranda Marín had started implementing in the city of Caguas, were a constant presence during the inauguration of the XXth International Education Conference (IDEC 2012) at the city’s Fine Arts Center.

The organizers of IDEC, academic leaders and members of the third sector in education from Puerto Rico and the Mayor of Caguas, William Miranda Torres, welcomed 800 participants from 25 countries around the world. Gathered at the inauguration were educators from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Germany, Haiti, India, Japan, Mexico, Myanmar, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.

Ana Yris Guzmán, vice-principal of Nuestra Escuela, one of the event’s organizing institutions, carried out an invocation and welcomed the participants, who then enjoyed a brief indigenous presentation to honor American ancestors.

“We are proud to be the first Spanish-speaking city to host this event”, Mayor Miranda Torres said as he espoused the ideas upon which work in the City of Caguas are based: “Education, self-management, sustainable development and criollo pride”. He declared that Caguas undertook the twentieth edition of IDEC because they support the efforts for high-quality and pertinent democratic education.

“I am proud to honor the idea of my father, William Miranda Marín, about democratic governance: to govern with the people instead of for the people…” he stated. “In his words, we frequently forget that education is everyone’s responsibility, that the patriotic duty of educating the people is not the sole responsibility of a Department of Education. That is the call of this conference: to embrace our peoples’ education. We must understand that education is much more than the school. It is the opportunity of enjoying a more humane country with a better quality of education.”

Natalia Rosado, a university student and leader of the Youth Forum, and grade-school student Yalena Medina Torregrosa also welcomed the participants on behalf of the youth.

In his welcome address, Justo Méndez Arámburu, director and founder of Nuestra Escuela, honored the beginning of this project by remembering how one day, in the middle of a period of profound sadness because of the premature death of his daughter Ana Mercedes, he had a dream. “In that dream, Ana Mercedes tells me: ‘daddy, let’s make a school: Our School (Nuestra Escuela). She named it… But how are we going to make a school, Ana Mercedes?” Justo told her in the dream. “Let yourself go”, she replied.

Justo was left asking himself: how am I going to build a school? “When I told Ana Yris: ‘look at what Ana Mercedes says, for us to make a school’. She replied: ‘then let’s make it’”. It had been the first time that his wife had seen a sparkle in his eyes since Ana Mercedes’ passing. It was for that reason that she did not hesitate to encourage him to undertake the project.

The next speaker was Lourdes Aponte, President of the Alliance for Alternative Education in Puerto Rico that gathers ASPIRA, Sor Isolina Ferré Centers, Nuestra Escuela, Nacer Project and P.E.C.E.S., also remembered William Miranda Marín’s initiatives. “With a global vision, he believed in the new school, in the education of citizens and its link with a country’s social and economic development”.

Aponte concluded the event speaking about alternative education’s achievements in Puerto Rico. “We are not teaching, because teaching on its own can be insufficient. We are inserting ourselves in the process of forming individuals that can: be open to change; have initiatives and are responsible for their actions; have the abilities to choose and self-direct; develop critical thinking; acquire knowledge to identify solutions to the challenges that life presents; face problems with intelligence. Individuals that have the capacity to work and live in society”.

Rafael Aragunde and César Rey in IDEC 2012

How relevant are the things that are taught in Puerto Rican schools? How much does it matter to us? Are they truly pertinent to the lives of our children and youth?

These are some of the questions that will be discussed in the International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC 2012), which will be held in March in the city of Caguas.

The date of the Conference has arrived and, while we wait, something already seems to mark an important feature of this event: one breathes humanism.

The weekend rain has come to baptize a meeting that brings together hundreds of educators from more than twenty countries worldwide. They all represent diverse, international currents but the critique of traditional education-and its reproduction of an unequal society is common ground for the meetings, discussions and analysis.

A contrast against the dehumanizing tendency of education in the capitalist society can be seen immediately: love is spread here. People hug each other. We care about human beings.

Yesterday, many were commenting on their Facebook status about the banning of hugs among students from a school in New Jersey. We read with horror about this nonsense. Can love be forbidden? Can affection be regulated? Now, two students who are a couple, or friends or just classmates who respect each other risk being "reprimanded" by the simplest of gestures. If that was to happen in Nuestra Escuela (Our School), we would all be banned since, here, before beginning the school year, all students learn to hug their colleagues. Education is not confined to the contents of study and it should not lose its humanity. In that sense, IDEC is been celebrated in a good time.

The rain does not stop, but the hundreds of people arriving remind me of that protest slogan we’ve all sang so many times: "Neither with rain nor with bullet will this fight be over". The music plays, the dancers enjoy the occasional typical song and the rain stops in order for the sun to shine. It seems like a great message from nature. We have a future to work. For that, we are here.

The author is a teacher at Nuestra Escuela (Our School) in Caguas, Puerto Rico.