Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2013 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ireland, Iceland that we created new Comenius
projects.
Even if I work on some more and different types of
projects, I always look at this platform, which
connects people, meets teachers’ needs and gives
us opportunities to form global teachers’ networks,
groups and teams.
Today we are a wide partner group from Bulgaria,
Turkey, Romania, Czech Republic and Latvia,
thankful to the eTwinning collaboration.
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austerity reforms mean that education has become
soulless and only about financial numbers rather
than people” (Minder. R., 2013), jeopardizing not
only education but an entire generation.
At the same time, teachers argue that a vision of
education based on testing and rankings are
gaining space, leaving no room for creative
challenge and thinking. Chomsky, in the interview
held by Falcone (2013), illustrates it with teachers’
testimonies:
“A little girl came up after class
and said she was interested in
something that came up in class,
and wanted to know how to look
into it. And I tell her, you can't
do it; you got to study for the
test. Your future depends on it;
my salary depends on it.”
I wonder how many of us can picture themselves in
these words and has stopped to reflect upon them?
According to Chomsky (ibidem), “that's happening
all over. And it has the obvious technique of
dumbing down the population, and also controlling
them”. And so far, what are we doing about it in
order to prevent it?
Times Are of Change… Where Does eTwinning
Fit?
By Helena Serdoura
Schools in Portugal saw, in the last two years, deep
changes in their school curriculum. In my
perspective two principles could stand for the
phenomenon: austerity measures and government
cost cutting to meet the fiscal targets and a political
vision for public education.
As a result, some subjects were withdrawn from the
curriculum, the number of students increased per
class and, as a consequence, 15.000 teachers were
laid off over the last two years. Not to mention the
impact in the school system and the quality of
public education. As a teacher at a Portuguese
school points it out in The New York Times, “the
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