UNESCO Day 2 Part 3 of 3

Where was I... right.. 1:30 am...

We adjourned from the UNESCO headquarters and found a Kebab place that was still open, where my vegetarian and vegan friends had a very difficult time finding food, but did succeed eventually. Then we retired to the Ibis hotel lobby. This group was an interesting mix. Two Canadians, one Swiss, two from the US (including me) and two from Latin America (Brazil and Uruguay, I believe). We settled into the lobby with our laptops galore and our empty pizza boxes ready to fulfill our mission in less than half an hour. That was the idea when we started - it was only 2 am.

The discussion also took longer because one of the Canadians had to translate everything into Spanish, and then vice verse when the Latin Americans spoke. Our mission had been simple, yet because of underlying tensions we were really discussing other issues. The decision of who was in the meeting had even been political, to a point. The Swiss student had been chosen as a representative of the European Student Union. He was there to tell us what their opinion was. He was there as an emissary, not just on his own. I was there simply by mistake, but also because I like putting in 120% at conferences. I enjoy staying up till all hours of the night planning an attack. In the preceding meeting we had been very upset about this student panel. The plan we came up with was to ambush the man in charge of higher education at UNESCO and tell him that we thought his panel was rubbish and that we should have democratically chosen student representatives on that panel. We also decided that if we only had one student, it should be the student from Brazil. Even though I never understood his Spanish, I always felt the power of his words. Whenever he spoke in our discussions I listened to him, even though I could not understand him. We also agreed upon the four things that he should bring up:
1. Education is a public responsibility and a public good and as such, it should have have high levels of public financing
2. We are against the commodification of education and General Agreement on Trade and Services. (GATS) Opposing this commodification includes opposing a ranking system.
3. Students should participate in all levels of education, and in UNESCO (and other inter-governmental) forums about education
4. Learning should be student centered. Meaning that it takes into account the whole student, not just the academic life, but also the mental, physical and spiritual life of the student. Learning should also include "informal" and "non-formal" education (i.e. integral education) such as internships and traineeships and community based learning.

There was a point about an international ombudsperson, but that could not be agreed upon, so we decided not to bring it up. We finally made this list and had our strategy planned to find the Man tomorrow. It was only 4 am. Only 4 am. We had agreed to meet at 8 am in the lobby so that we could share our brilliant strategy with the rest of the students.

That was the end of Day 2 for me, although, as my Latin American friend reminded us repeatedly, we were already well into Day 3.