CITIZEN PARTICIPATION AS A RESILIENCE FACTOR IN THE EDUCATION

SECTOR IN THE FACE OF THE EFFECTS OF THE PANDEMIC

The importance and necessity of "citizen participation (of society, civil society,
citizenship) in education" has become a recurrent and generally accepted theme in
most countries in the world.

The growing value attributed to civil society and citizen participation in local,
national and international thinking and action has as its background a redefinition
of the role of - and the relationship between - the State and civil society, as well as
between both and international development cooperation agencies, within the
framework of a redefinition of the relationship between the public and the private,
and between the local, the national and the global. and between both and
international development cooperation agencies, within the framework of a
redefinition of the relationship between the public and the private, and between the
local, the national and the global. In IDB terms, we would be advancing in the
construction of "a new societal paradigm characterized simultaneously by
economic efficiency and social efficiency" (IDB-Argentina 1998: 9).

The traditional attribution of the public and public policy - understood as that which
deals with the "common good", the "interest of all" - as the exclusive domain of the
State, is today questioned. On the one hand, there is a growing openness of the
state and the "public sphere" to the active intervention of non-state actors. On the
other hand, there is a growing openness of States and national societies, and of
public policy, to the influence of international agencies, which have incorporated
civil society as a new interlocutor, with and without the mediation of the State. As
was pointed out at an IDB meeting, today we would be dancing a "tango among
three": the State, civil society and the Bank (donor agency). In truth, however, it is
a "tango among four", since the new major player, the market, is absent from this
triad. Civil society (its own characterization as such, its new role, its limits and
possibilities) is located and defined today in this complex web of relations between
the State, the market and international agencies.

The growing visibility of civil society is related to the growth and increasing weight
of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), particularly Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs), at the national and international level. International
agencies have played an important role in this, seeing the strengthening and
participation of CSOs as fundamental elements of democratization, modernization
and governance, as well as greater effectiveness and sustainability in the
execution of development policies and projects that have been carried out with the
support of international cooperation.

The need to strengthen social organization and participation has been historically
highlighted in the field of education, particularly by progressive thought and forces.
Today, participation permeates all discourses, nationally and internationally, and
has come to be taken up as a banner also by States and international agencies.
However, this consensus is more nominal than real, remains more attached to
rhetoric than to facts, and is based on restricted conceptions of participation
(centered on instrumental aspects), civil society (generally reduced to non-
governmental organizations-NGOs) and education (reduced to school or formal
education).

A broad vision of "citizen participation in education" implies accepting that:

Education is not limited to school education, nor can the necessary learning - for
life, for work, for participation, for full citizenship - be limited to a given period of a
person's life. Learning begins at birth and extends throughout life, starts at home,
precedes and exceeds the school institution, encompassing a broad set of
institutions, modalities, relationships and practices. Education, educational
community and educational policy are much broader, respectively, than school
education, school community and school policy.

 Civil society" is an extremely heterogeneous and complex reality, made up

of a wide mosaic of organizations (NGOs being only a segment, and a
minority one, of CSOs), in which multiple visions, interests and conflicts are
expressed. In fact, the national processes and international initiatives of
educational reform tested in this region in recent years have been showing
the existence of, and confrontation between, differentiated "civil societies"
(positions, interests, ideologies) around them.
 Participation, in order to become an instrument of development,
empowerment and social equity, must be meaningful and authentic, involve
all actors, differentiating but synchronizing their roles, and occur in the
various spheres and dimensions of education: from the classroom to
educational policy, within school and also out-of-school education, in
administrative aspects and also in those related to teaching and learning,
locally as well as nationally and globally. This implies the study, definition
and implementation of a strategy for social participation embedded within
the educational policy itself, and agreed upon in a participatory manner, in
order to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each of the actors and
to ensure the conditions and mechanisms to make such participation
effective.

Citizen participation in educational decisions and actions is not a luxury or

an option: it is an indispensable condition for sustaining, developing and
transforming education in the desired directions. It is not only a political-
democratic imperative - citizens' right to information, to consultation and
initiative, to transparency in the management of public affairs - but also one
of relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of the actions undertaken.
Because education and educational change involve people and pass, by
therefore, through knowledge, reasoning, subjectivity, cultural patterns,
expectations, willingness to change and the change itself of specific people;
What is saved - in time, resources, complications - by overlooking people
and their organizations, is paid for in the inadequacy of the proposed ideas
to the concrete realities and possibilities, in incomprehension, resistance or,
even worse, apathy, of those who are called to take ownership and to do. To
 affirm this no longer requires the support of quotations and studies,
because, if common sense were not enough, it has already become part of
the body of great lessons learned in the processes of educational reform
worldwide and specifically in this region.

The 1990s, with the great transformations it brought about worldwide, at all
levels, brought many and varied reform proposals for education, ranging
from lukewarm versions of "improving the quality of (school) education" to
radical proposals for paradigm shifts, some of which, relying on the
superpower of modern Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs), even envisage the disappearance of education.Some of them,
relying on the superpower of modern Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs), even foresee the disappearance of the school system
as we know it. The version of reform that was imposed throughout the
decade in this region and in other regions of the South, through international
financing and advice, particularly from the World Bank, included
decentralization, school autonomy, community participation and co-
management, and social consultation as fundamental components. (Box 1).
These policies and measures had different modes and degrees of
interpretation, implementation, development and success in different
countries, programs and regions. In many cases, as is recognized, these
measures were hasty and partial; in most cases they generated
misalignments and resistance, not only from teachers but also from the
school community, a broad spectrum of social organizations and public
opinion.

Despite the officialization of the participatory discourse, and the effective promotion
of the participation of certain sectors through measures and programs, never
before has there been so much demand (school community, NGOs, social
movements, etc.) for participation and consultation, or for the weaknesses and
inadequacies in the management of these. They stimulated innovation in some
cases and paralyzed it in others. They contributed to the development of hybrid
forms, novel and imported in some cases, novel and their own in others, not
contemplated either in the recommendation or in the manual. In any case, the
results in terms of the expected improvement in the quality of learning have yet to
be seen and, in general, have been disappointing to date.

From this recent period, and from the several decades of intermittent reform,
important lessons have yet to be learned and assimilated. But what cannot be left
aside as a lesson learned is the reaffirmation of the complexity of educational
change and the need to deepen the social participation of all, at all levels, in the
different areas and stages of educational development in our countries.

The situation today is contradictory and unstable. In some places, the reform
begins to be reformed, going backwards or proposing new alternatives to remedy
the new evils brought about by the new solutions; in others, it is rectified but
consolidates what has been advanced. Every country and the entire region is a
hotbed of exploration, from above, from below and from the sides. Many of these
have - or make of - participation a fundamental ingredient, and are therefore more
valuable and more likely to be appropriated, leave their mark, multiply in others and
extend over time, beyond rhetoric or ephemeral innovation.

This study is based on and relies on some of these experiences, not for the
diagnosis but for the proposal, showing part of what exists and what is possible in
a deeply contradictory, dynamic and fertile reality such as the one that
characterizes this region. This set of experiences embodies various dimensions,
spheres, levels and actors of the "broad vision" of citizen participation in education
advocated here. Although they should be interspersed throughout the text, for
reasons of layout and ease of reading, we place them at the end, as an appendix.

The experiences selected (Box 2) constitute a small sample of what we know and
what surely exists, and by no means claim to be exhaustive. The space available
for this document limits the number of experiences that could be included. For the
rest, we have opted for a few experiences, presented in a little more detail, rather
than many that are barely mentioned or treated superficially. We have expressly
sought to include some new experiences, or those that are little known or
publicized. Most are from the recent past, with a few dating back to the 1980s or
1970s. All those referring to educational institutions belong to public or private non-
profit institutions. We have avoided calling them "success stories" or "best
practices" because they are experiences in process, unfinished, contradictory, with
unresolved problems and dilemmas, as human enterprises that venture into new
terrain tend to be, especially in a world as complex as that of education and
learning. Few of them, moreover, have evaluations or systematizations of what has
been done, which is often the case in the field of educational reform and
innovation.

The banner of "strengthening civil society" and citizen participation has coincided -
and not by chance - with the banner of the "modernization" of the State, a State
that today is shrinking and weakening. However, as is widely recognized today,
this equation does not close: advancing in the construction of fairer and more
democratic nations implies building both a strong State and a strong civil society,
since the strength or weakness of one makes for the strength or weakness of the
other. It is therefore essential to work from and for the construction of dialogue,
rapprochement and cooperation between the two, accepting that critical support,
responsibility, transparency and accountability must be applied symmetrically, on
both sides.
A strong state and a strong civil society require strong investment in education and
learning, information and communication, knowledge, science and technology,
research and cultural creation. Citizen participation is therefore not a concession,
or an evil that we have no choice but to accept, but a condition of such construction
and therefore a responsibility that the State itself and civil society have towards
themselves and towards citizens in general.

DUCATION AND LEARNING

The notion of education has remained strongly tied to that of the school system.
"Education policy" and "education reform" generally refer to policy for the school
system and for reform of the (public) school system.

However, education is not limited to the school system. Since 1976, the
international classification of education has recognized three types of education:
formal, non-formal and informal. Formal education corresponds to that offered
within the school system, which leads from pre-school to university, has official
recognition and certification; non-formal education includes all those educational
activities organized outside the formal system, with or without accreditation of
studies, and which is offered by a great variety of institutions/organizations, to
attend to specific needs and groups; finally, under the category of informal
education are grouped all those learning activities that are carried out through daily
experience and contact with the environment (family, friends, neighbors,
community or neighborhood, natural environment, work, leisure, recreation,
etc.).Finally, the informal category includes all learning that takes place through
daily experience and contact with the environment (family, friends, neighbors,
community or neighborhood, natural environment, work, recreation, media, reading
and self-directed study, etc.).

Within the framework of lifelong learning, assumed today as a paradigm and

organizing principle of educational systems in the society of the 21st century, and
also in the context of the promotion of ICTs, the distinctions between these three
educational modalities become blurred, suggesting their complementarity and the
need to establish bridges between them. Non-formal and informal education are
becoming increasingly visible and important, and informal learning is the one with
the greatest volume and incidence, since it is the one that accompanies people
throughout their lives. (Delors 1996; Commission of the European Communities
2000).

We are also moving from an emphasis on quantity to an emphasis on quality,

understanding that one cannot go without the other, and from an emphasis on
education to an emphasis on learning, understanding that what matters is not that
it is taught, but that the teaching is translated into effective learning. We are thus
moving from lifelong education (Faure Report 1973) to lifelong learning (Delors
Report 1996; Memorandum on Lifelong Learning 2000), and from the educating
society to the learning society.

Moving towards a learning and knowledge society implies not only expanding and
transforming the school system, but also expanding and strengthening learning
opportunities outside the school system, ensuring the complementarity and
synergy of the various education and learning systems. Educational policy,
therefore, expands beyond school policy and citizen participation in education is no
longer understood exclusively as participation around the institution, the system
and school reform.

Several of the experiences included here are located outside the school system or
are articulated with it from spaces traditionally considered "extra-school" in
reference to the school, but which today acquire their own status and value as
spaces for education and learning. Some of them have to do not only with the
school community but with the broader educational community at the local, national
and international levels.