The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, opened this Monday at the United Nations with the promise of transforming education to offer opportunities to young people in areas affected by the conflict and drug trafficking, democratize culture and turn the country into a “knowledge society”.
(In context: Gustavo Petro spoke about education at the UN summit).
Petro chaired a round table of international leaders in the framework of the Summit on the Transformation of Education held by the UN and stressed the need to act with concrete measures to address the current educational “global crisis”.
For Colombia, the president proposed a plan based on three axes: education as part of his total peace project, the democratization of culture and the transformation of the productive model.
In the first section, Petro pointed out that it is necessary to multiply opportunities for young people from disadvantaged areas and allow them “imagine a different future” to the exclusion and violence they have experienced so far. According to him, his goal is to build universities that become “foundations of total peace“. Petro also advocated protecting Colombian cultural diversity and “democratizing culture”, taking it to all schools and colleges.
Finally, he considered that education must be the basis of a “productive transformation” that allows behind the dependence on coal and oil and turn Colombia into a “knowledge society”. As he explained, with education new sectors and a new economic model will emerge: “our greatest asset will be the creativity and ingenuity of our people,” he said.
(Read: Petro arrived in New York: these are the axes of his speech at the UN).
Petro at the UN
Petro argued that with education “the unequal power of the world and of our societies” can be changed. Together with him, other Latin American leaders participated today at the UN summit.or the president of Peru, Pedro Castillowho insisted on the “transforming potential of education”.
A former rural teacher, Castillo said he was well aware of “the limitations and challenges” facing education in remote and impoverished areas and said that his government is committed to a inclusive education and decentralized management. The Peruvian leader recalled that covid-19 has caused “one of the greatest educational crises in history” and stressed the importance of recovering all lost learning.
(Keep reading: Government of Colombia meets with the largest dissident group of the Farc).
In this sense, he highlighted that his country has achieved the total return of the students in person and said that investing in human capital to improve quality and conducting consultations to reform curricula to bring them up to date. The president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, spoke for his part about how the schools in his country gave remote classes during the pandemic and how they managed to continue giving meals to 2.5 million students, the same number as before the coronavirus hit. , in what is an example of success on the continent.
“Education -said Giammattei- is the best investment in favor of present and future generations, which allows promoting a culture of peace, inclusion, responsibility and preservation of the environment”.
EFE
