XV WORLD CONGRESS OF COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
Buenos Aires, 24-28 June 2013
Norberto Fernández Lamarra, President of SAECE, WCCES Vice-President
Inaugural Address
In August 2001, a group of lecturers from universities across the whole country created the
Argentine Society of Comparative Studies in Education (SAECE). To this end, there was
invaluable support and cooperation from colleagues, specially Robert Arnove and Miguel
Ángel Escotet –both from CIES- and an Argentine specialist, Ángel Diego Márquez, who was
in the 60s and 70s one of the main founders of Comparative Education in Spain and Latin
America. There was also support from UNESCO’s International Bureau of EducationCecilia Braslavsky, a colleague and friend, forever in our thoughts, and Juan Carlos Tedesco,
from IIEP-UNESCO- Buenos Aires.
At that time there were very few chairs in Comparative Education and very few studies and
research that could strictly be defined as Comparative Education. Hence the chosen name was
Society of Comparative Studies in Education, not Comparative Education.
There is an interesting, recorded 40-year tradition at Universidad de Buenos Aires of an
Educational Policy and Comparative Education Chair, created by Professor Héctor Félix
Bravo, where I had the opportunity to participate and put forward ideas.-in its inception stageas an assistant lecturer, shortly after graduation.
In the late 70s and early 80s there was a Comparative Education Society- which I took part in,
but it was more of a shelter during the military dictatorship that struck our country than a
locus of academic work. With the advent of democracy, that Society waned.
From a humble start in 2001, there has been steady growth. In 2004- at the XII World
Congress in Havana- SAECE was accepted as member of the World Congress. Since then, we
have organized four national Conferences; three of them were also of an international nature.
At every one, there were more than 200 delegates- whose papers may be browsed on our
website- from Argentina and other countries in Latin America, especially from Brazil. We are
grateful for the generous academic expertise and support provided at those times by our
colleagues and friends from the Spanish Comparative Education Society (SEEC) José Luis
García Garrido, Javier Valle and Luis Miguel Lázaro.
We have organized a network of ongoing exchanges and shared projects with sister societies
in Latin America, SBEC in Brazil, Asociación de Pedagogos from Cuba and SOMEC from
México- and our elder brothers, the Spanish Society of Comparative Education. The academic
support and encouragement of colleagues from all those societies led to the creation of the
Latin American Journal of Comparative Education (RELEC) – an e-publication -with about
15,000 monthly visits. There has been academic development thanks to the valuable
cooperation of many colleagues, within the framework of the World Council, especially its
Past President Mark Bray.
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When we believed we were mature enough,-encouraged by various colleagues from the
World Council- we rose to the challenge of making a bid to host the XV World Congress.
Colleagues from the Executive Committee at the World Council trusted us-in spite of our
‘institutional youth’. Let us hope that here and now- at the opening session of this World
Congress-we may show that such trust has been honoured. That is for you to say….
A young society such as ours had to think about –and propose- the theme New Times, New
Voices because Latin America -the New World- has always been the land of promise, as
regards projects, proposals, times, voices.
In this regard, it is worth focusing on the aymará culture, an indigenous people from Bolivia,
Peru and north-western Argentina. For them, and other first peoples, the future does not lie
‘ahead’ but ‘in the background’. Instead, what lies ahead is the past, what we may see. The
future is uncertain. We do not see it. New times are an enigma that will unfold through our
action and other people’s actions….
Therefore, reviewing the past of our continent, in the five centuries of the so-called
‘discovery’ the political, social and academic centre has been the struggle for
freedom…between the ‘oppressor’, national or foreign, within the continent or abroad.
The challenge is to provide ‘voice’ for the down-trodden among our peoples. The challenge is
for the potent voice of the oppressed to be heard, it is not about being ‘the voice of the
voiceless’, since they do speak! But their discourse is ignored, not heard, in spite of centuries
they have spent ‘shouting’- with voices almost hoarse already- claiming against the culture of
silence imposed by oppressors. Making them heard is a necessary requisite but it is not
enough. It needs to be done – above all for us, intellectuals, comparative education scholarsplacing ourselves on a par with those who have not been heard so far, not above them, not
translating for them with complex, elaborate academic explanations but helping to hear the
simplicity- also the depth of such voices- perhaps not new by now but always fully current.
According to Paulo Freire– whose ‘voice’ we will listen to at one of the keynote panels- as he
remembered learning during his childhood and youth…’texts, words, letters from that context
were embodied in birdsong –tanagras, hunting birds, thrushes- in the dancing of branches
blown by strong winds foreshadowing storms, in thunder and lightning- in raindrops that
played with geography, creating lakes, islands, rivers and streams. Texts, words and letters
from that context were also embodied in the whirlwind, in clouds in the sky, the colour of the
sky, its movement, the color of foliage, the shape of leaves, flower scent…part of the context
of my immediate world was also the universe of language of my elders, expressing their
beliefs, tastes and values, which united my world with a greater one related to the existence of
the Other that I would never have envisaged’.
Such intertwining between past, present and future also allows to develop awareness that
Latin-American ‘voices’ have, have had and will continue to have a remarkable importance in education and in other areas- though many times, they have not been heard by ‘dominant
rulers’. By those who have so far exerted the monopoly of ‘proper thinking’, of academia, of
alleged ‘universal thinking’ a phrase that I include in inverted commas. These ‘new voices’
from Latin America are to be associated with yet other ‘new voices’ that have always been
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silenced on every continent, and also join new voices that are arising in the North, even in the
allegedly old Europe, demanding more social justice, more equity, better education for all…
Latin America has been the venue for ideas, proposals, projects that have allowed a lease on
life for new voices, new outlooks for new times….Listening to these voices has to be done
with regard to the situated universal. Of course, this not the place or the opportunity to
develop extensively the notion of situated universal, so important for the philosophy of Latin
American liberation. Suffice it to say that instead of thinking the own particular as universal
and then interpret other particulars, it would seem more convenient to seek the universal and
from that vantage point interpret the other particulars, as from the awareness of differences
that are inherent in every particular. It is ex post universality instead of ex ante. Outcome:
arrival instead of departure point.
Within this conceptual framework, let us highlight the Dependency Theory-in the 60s -which,
with Enzo Faletto, from Chile, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, from Brazil and many other
economists and planning experts imprinted new, anti imperialistic thought from CEPAL- led
by Raúl Prebisch, a graduate from this UBA School of Economics.
In social and political terms, Latin America witnessed the rise of liberation theology with
Dussell, Boff, Helder Cámara and many other remarkable thinkers and priests in almost all
Latin American countries that enabled advanced post-colonial thought as well as philosophers
–from Eduardo Nicol onwards- who subjected an important part of valuable European
philosophy to rigorous critique from different national realities.
Within this conceptual framework, almost one century ago, in 1918, here in Latin America,
here in Argentina, at the State University of Córdoba ⌠Universidad Nacional de Córdoba⌡ a
historic event that has characterized –for about a 100 years- the Latin American University
took place. The Córdoba Reform Movement struggled for university autonomy, faculty and
student co-governance -with graduates at a later stage-, pedagogical renewal, freedom for
chairs, a social role of University and its commitment to social change, solidarity with the
people and workers, the central status of students as protagonists in University, etc. The
Reform Movement-perhaps still unaccomplished to some extent- characterizes the Latin
American state university and can be offered to the rest of the world.
Somewhat later- but 50 years ago by now- there is the rise of a unique figure; Paulo Freire
with the Angicos experience (the subject of a plenary panel in this Congress) and important
contributions of liberation pedagogues, as well as the social movement that arose to confront
the neoliberal model but also to build a new model of education and society.
All this is being debated, confronted with education that many times reflects the demands of
the XIX century or the already old XX century. May the debate proposed by the ever
prestigious UNESCO –despite the unusual decision of some Northern countries to stop paying
their dues- on the Delors Report enable us to hear those old new voices thinking about our
time, which will often be those of old times of autonomy, and liberation of Latin America and
the rest of the world not yet emancipated but framed in the demands of new times.
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Education with democracy and equity- that prioritizes the needs of the oppressed, the poor,
the castaway-, that strives for cohesion and social integration, that strengthens strategic values
to conform a multicultural participative society, with truly free citizens, fully open to
knowledge, science and new technologies, with policies enforced via true negotiation and
consensus processes, that give a voice to those that have so far been marginalized, unheard of
to attain genuine gender equality.
To that end, we also need new and truly innovative organizational, pedagogical, curricular
and didactic models. Education that is pertinent to social needs – particularly those of
demographic groups marginalized so far - but also new participatory management models,
transparent and efficient, not only as regards finances but also- very specially, as stated
earlier, pertinent to society.
To achieve that, we must work to strengthen the convergence of educational systems, national
and international, overcoming the traditional relationship North–South, which has led - on
many opportunities- to develop a neo-colonialist relationship: the South has had to do what
the North imposed. We will have to generate a new, strong South-South relationship and from
that convergence, join the North at a par, to make it possible to overcome relationships of a
strong colonialist or imperialist character. For all this, Comparative Education, comparative
studies in education will be an excellent means if we discuss academic strategies, theoretical
and methodological models being used, theories in vogue. That is, if we put academic tools on
a working strategy of study, of reflection to revise what has been superseded by another
strategy that serves new social demands, new voices, their demands-our new times- for a
world in vertiginous social, political, scientific, technological change….
This type of debate and the quest for new coincidences is to be envisaged within our World
Council of Comparative Education Societies. There is a need for a Council that is open,
transparent, democratic, that promotes the theoretical and methodological bases for a full
academic development of Comparative Education worldwide. A World Council that is not
centred on the North, that is actually multicultural and multilingual. That enters actively into
partnership with other academic organizations in education with global scope to become a
nurturing environment to accompany- with its studies, research, proposals- the development
of a new comparative education to serve new education, new voices, and reacts to the new
times that the world is coming to.
We hope to find-among the many papers submitted by colleagues worldwide- voices
emerging from educational experience derived from the dire social and economic crises in
Latin America at the end of the last century and currently faced by a great part of the planet.
As the Catholic Church came to seek the new Pope - Pope Francis- here at the world’s end,
for its renewal, it is hoped that at this World Congress, with our academic proposals, our
research, our debates, we may contribute towards the building of renewed, innovative
education to address, with social justice and equity, the grievances of new voices for new
times already under way.
Many thanks for your enthusiasm, your effort, your determination to join us for this XV
World Congress of Comparative Education. We hope you enjoy your stay here, in our City of
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Buenos Aires, establish new and valuable ties, both social and academic, and get to know us,
the Argentine people, our culture, our art, our tango, our lifestyle…
Before concluding, my gratitude goes to SAECE members who renewed their effort in the
collective undertaking of organizing this World Congress, to colleagues from IberianAmerican societies and the rest of the world who associated themselves to our endeavour and
to the World Council of Comparative Education Societies, for having placed their trust on us
and for their support over the complex and challenging organizational process.
To all of you, dear colleagues from all over the world, many thanks for joining us at this XV
World Congress of Comparative Education…for having made the effort to be here, with us.
May you agree with our greatest poet, Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote that the city of Buenos
Aires is, in essence, timeless: “a mí se me hace cuento que empezó Buenos Aires… la juzgo
tan eterna como el agua y el aire”
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