Calais, 3 July 2021.

1921 – 2021

LAUNCH OF CONVERGENCES FOR NEW EDUCATION

100 years after the congress of the International League of New Education in Calais in 1921, « Convergences » establishes 2021 as the year of New Education!

On 6 March 2021, the launch of Convergences for New Education took place at a distance because of the pandemic. It allowed the eight movements that initiated it – CEMÉA, CRAP, FESPI, FICEMÉA, FIMEM, GFEN, ICEM, LIEN – to show that, despite their specific sensitivities, they are capable of uniting in order to carry common values and convictions, to « converge » in order to continue the history of the New Education

 

A common name and logo unveiled today were the first communication elements of « Convergences » to be displayed together. A video recording is available below.

On 3 July 2021, this launch will take place in Calais with the activists of our movements. This event is held symbolically and historically in the very city where the first congress of the International League was held in 1921; it is supported by the city of Calais and placed under the patronage of UNESCO.

It will be a collective mobilisation in the service of a shared ambition: education for individual and collective emancipation and the development of solidarity. It will be an opportunity to affirm that the process of « Convergences for the New Education » revisits the past to better understand and transform the present and prepare the future; in other words, it will be the celebration of an anniversary well anchored in the 21st century and turned towards the future.

We will first see how the challenges of the New Education in 2021 respond to the civilisational urgency of those of 1921, even if the societal and political situation is not the same.

We will also see that this initiative is part of the present: our organisations are active and essential to the reflection on education, our activists committed to bringing educational situations to life on a daily basis for children and the adults they form. The bet of educability, the slogan of the GFEN « All capable » constitute one of the pillars of the common political project of « Convergences ».

Finally, we will look to the future by launching the collective writing of a Manifesto for New Education which will be the basis of our mobilisations – for another century, we hope! – the basis of our mobilisations and will widen the circle of « Convergences » to other partners. Then there will be the Biennial Meeting in October 2022, probably in Brussels, which will be an open and dynamic space for exchanges, confrontations and knowledge, allowing for the debate and the battle of ideas that are so fertile for the advancement of humanity.

The new education may be 100 years old, but we will be able to show, through the strength of our practices and the incredible modernity of our educational, social and cultural ambitions, that it is still new and will remain so for a long time to come!

See you on Saturday 3 July 2021
at 2pm at the Cité de la Dentelle, or online
by clicking here. 
Welcome
Speech by an elected official of the Calais Town Hall
Extract from the film on the first congress of the International League of New Education in Calais in 1921.
Computer graphics on the New Education commented by Sylvain WAGNON, historian, professor in education sciences at the University of Montpellier and specialist of the New and Libertarian Education.
1921/2021. Between history and modernity.
What are the realities for the New Education today.
The Manifesto, the future common base for the enlargement of the organisations involved in Convergence(s). See you in Brussels in 2022 for the third International Biennial of New Education

Contacts :

Anne Claire Devoge- CEMEA- anne-claire.devoge at cemea.asso.fr

Isabelle Lardon – GFEN – isabelle.lardon at gmail.com