Accueil / EUROPE / Call for an alternative summit on education and research 5-7 May 2011

Let’s save Research has signed up the Call for an alternative summit on education and research on 5th-7th May 2011 in Dijon (France)

In 2011, France will be chairing the G8 and G20 summits. Their education and research component, the ‘G8 University Summit’ is scheduled to take place in Besançon from 28th to 30th April and Dijon from 5th to 7th May.

The G8/G20 is the driving force of neoliberal globalization, it defines the ensuing political agenda which is then implemented by all the big international organizations. In this context, the ‘G8 University summit’ is a recent addition, the 2011 Dijon/Besançon meeting being the fourth of its kind. While the first three had focused on the very consensual theme of “development”, the stated objective of this year’s summit will be to plan the marketisation of education and research. This global policy is already destroying the public sector which guarantees minimal access to higher education.

State-funded research and education are increasingly being degraded on every level. They are one of the public sectors the most affected by capitalistic interests, in Europe and worldwide. Hiding behind the convenient excuse of austerity measures, the European Union and its governments are putting in place destructive social and educational reforms. From primary schools to universities and research, the trend is to turn education and research into a commodity to be subsumed into the capitalist market place, and subjected to diktats of economy-based knowledge and totalizing free-market ideology, along with lower working conditions, the denial of trade-union rights, limitations on academic freedom in teaching and research, and so on and so forth.

In Europe and beyond, the same conditions apply. High-profile mobilization against this marketisation of knowledge has already occurred in France, Greece, Italy, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Concerted resistance is widespread in every country where such reforms are in place or in the process of being implemented, giving such movements a transnational character. Effective opposition demands collective thought and action. We believe there is an urgent need to organize global resistance. Our alternative summit is intended as part of this global resistance. Our aims are to :

• highlight the social implications of education and research reform and to provide a place where experience and theories on this issue may be shared ; to debate on the role of education and research and the impact they may have socially, politically and environmentally, and at local, regional and international level ;

• be a mouthpiece for alternative discourses on education and research which question prevailing trends in teaching and research, its institutions and methods trapped in the prism of neoliberal economic policy, competition, the globalization of markets, the domination and exploitation of humankind and nature ;

• reassert the potential of education to empower and create awareness, to bridge the gap between cultures and practices, to free from oppression and combat isolation and fragmentation.

We’re proposing to think together around the following issues : access to education and research, job insecurity, excellence, autonomy, workability, mobility, the situation of ‘overseas’ students, alternative teaching methods, modes of resistance, education and society.

This international event will attract networks involved in the fields of education and research, it aims at federating teachers, students, lecturers, academics, researchers, parents, activists and all those who feel concerned by those issued, whether at a local, regional or international level.

We’re calling for the alternative education and research summit that will take place in Dijon, France from 5thto 7thMay 2011.

The organizing committee for the alternative education and research summit (Alternatifs 21, AMEB, ATTAC21, ATTAC Besançon, CNT21, CUAE, FASE, FSU21, Forum social local21, NPA21, RUSF21, RUSF Franche-Comté, SNASUB-FSU 21, SNESUP 21, Sud éducation Franche-Comté, UEC 21, UGED-FSE, Individu-e-s)

www.contreg8db2011.lautre.net

Signataires nationaux : Alternatifs, ATTAC, CGT-FERC, CNT-FTE, Fédération des syndicats SUD Éducation, NPA, Organisation Démocratique de l’Enseignement – ODT (Maroc), PCF, Sauvons La Recherche, SNCS, SNESUP, Solidaires, SUD Etudiant, SUD Recherche, UEC, Unicobas Scuola (Italie)

The call is available in English, Spanish, German and French at http://www.contreg8db2011.lautre.ne...