The Coalition for Authentic Reform of Education in Lebanon
CARE, the Coalition for Authentic Reform of Education, is an H Institute initiative. It brings together organizations and individuals who share, and work diligently for, several convictions about formal education (education for short, thereafter) including, but not limited to the following:
- Education shall be not a marketable commodity but a public good that all youngsters can afford with equity and quality, all the way through university, for individual fulfillment and significant, sustainable development of communities and nation.
- Education shall be a systemic, not command-and-control enterprise, with mutual trust and distributed responsibility among various stakeholders, and enough leeway and autonomy for local authorities, schools, and teachers to serve best their students, communities, and nation.
- Universal schools that transcend the public-private and general-vocational dichotomies shall prevail with systemic, dynamic, cross-disciplinary curricula that empower individual students not for passing exams but for lifelong learning, global citizenship, and success and excellence in various aspects of life.
- Curriculum and instruction shall be governed at all educational levels by systemic, mind and brain based pedagogical frameworks that are intimately twinned with technology and that mandate relaxed, experiential, student-centered learning ecologies.
- Assessment and evaluation shall prevail instead of testing to promote meaningful and productive learning of individual students along efficient profile evolution roadmaps instead of rote and reproductive learning along futile and competitive race tracks.
- Teachers shall be critical, creative, and innovative agents of student profile development, not blind dispensers of curriculum materials, and teaching shall be a highly esteemed profession that attracts highly competent and dedicated people whose pre-service education and in-service continuous professional development take place with high quality standards.
- Educational reform shall authentically meet the local and global realities of our rapidly changing world, preclude hodge-podge improvisations and impregnation with foreign fads, programs, and diplomas, and institute appropriate systems for continuous regulation of all entities and practices.