MULTIRIO : a Public Media Producer for the Municipal Public Schools in Rio De Janeiro

MEDIA EDUCATION

Advances, Obstacles and New Trends since Grunwald: Towards a Scale Change?

Round Table No. 3: Which stakeholders have been involved outside schools? Which obstacles did they meet? What advances did they note? How do they cope with the evolution of the media landscape? What are the new trends for the future?

Presentation Title:

MULTIRIO : A Public Media Producer for the Municipal Public Schools in Rio de Janeiro

Dr. Regina de Assis President MULTIRIO, The Municipal Media Producer of Rio de Janeiro RIO/MIDIA , The International Reference Centre on Media for Children and Adolescents www.multirio.rj.gov.br/riomidia

he visionary statements of the Grunwald Declaration fostered by UNESCO in 1982 Tforesaw, 25 years ago, many of the challenges we are now facing and trying to resolve by involving several stakeholders outside the schools, among them, politicians elected by popular vote, secretaries of education and their staffs, researchers, professors, journalists and media professionals to deal with Media Education and Media for Education.

In 1990 the International Colloquy, also sponsored by UNESCO, on “New Directions in Media Education”, held in Toulouse, France, thought that “media problems should not be studied within the general context of communication problems, i.e. not as a form of knowledge, but as a process of communication to be established. This communication education would be in effect an active challenge to the receiver, thereby breaking the exclusive monopoly of the transmitters, whether they are ‘educationists’ or ‘communicators’”.

This reflection on the role of Media Education was an interesting step forward, because in the Media Age, Municipal Public Schools in many countries, and in this particular case, in Brazil, still try to educate using only the spoken and written word, although Teachers, Children and Adolescents are immersed in a world of sign, symbols, sounds and moving images expressed by audio/visual, digital and printed media.

Gradually, however, different media languages converge to contribute to the constitution of knowledge and values in the context of public schools. Radio channels, free-to-air, open, cable, satellite and very soon digital television, computers with access to the internet, electronic and digital games, cell phones/mobiles, advertising and publicity create a polyphony and a polysemy, which

1 provoke a profound epistemological change in the activities of teaching and learning in the schools. In this perspective Schools should be considered as a time and a space, which generate and facilitate connections among knowledge and values, producing memory, which systematize meaningful information and research, on different areas of human life.

If we consider that Early and Elementary Public Education in the developing countries deal with the vast majority of children and adolescents, who in the case of Rio, represent approximately 800.000 (eight hundred thousand) students, assisted by almost 37.000 (thirty seven thousand) teachers working in a network of 1058 (one thousand and fifty eight) Municipal Schools, we have a major challenge to face.

And this is because, if we are talking about a democratic, thus inclusive education, it should acknowledge Students and Teachers rights to Media Education and Media for Education.

Media Education offers the opportunity for a timely epistemological discussion, which so far, has failed to engage Undergraduate and Graduate Courses in the Universities in a fruitful and productive dialogue with the Public Municipal Schools Students and Teachers.

In Brazil, Early, Elementary and Special Education, as well as the Education for Young and Adult Illiterates, are constitutional responsibilities of the municipal governments, thus the challenges related to the conceptualization of pedagogical strategies, integrating media to the educational practices should be a main concern to those in charge of it.

Since 1993, when Mayor Cesar Maia invited us to be responsible for the Municipal Secretariat of Education, we had a vision for the need of the creation of a Basic Curricular Nucleus, which we wrote collectively with the teachers in a major effort, and also of the creation of a Public Media Producer for the Schools.

It took us almost three of our four years mandate to articulate all the stakeholders involved, starting with the Mayor, the House of Representatives to the City of Rio, the Teachers Union, the Municipal Council of Education, the Press and Media Representatives, the Parent’s Association and Teachers and Students as a whole.

It was very difficult at times, especially because we did not have a previous model on which to base our own experience, however we were able to gather a very competent and diversified team of professionals, coming from the media and educational areas, and that’s how we have developed the Basic Curricular Nucleus MULTIEDUCATION and MULTIRIO, The Municipal Multimedia Company of Rio de Janeiro from 1993 to 1996.

Later on after we organized the 4 th World Summit on Media for Children and Adolescents, sponsored by the World Summit on Media for Children Foundation in 2004, with the support of UNESCO, among other organizations, we created RIOMIDIA, The International Reference Centre on Media for Children and Adolescents, as a natural outcome of our activities between MULTIRIO and the Municipal Secretariat of Education.

2 In order to create our concept for both MULTIEDUCATION and MULTIRIO we departed from the Ethical Principles of Autonomy and Solidarity, the Political Principles of the Democratic Rights and Duties and of the Aesthetical Principles of Diversity and Sensibility for our Educational Policies.

This vision created the context for our Basic Curricular Nucleus MULTIEDUCATION, which later on has inspired MULTIRIO’s productions and actions.

We started with Educational Principles encompassing Environment, Labour, Culture, Languages/Media, and Conceptual Nucleus to deal with the various areas of knowledge through the pedagogical practices, articulating the diversity of Schools, Teachers and Students by highlighting Identities, Time, Space and Transformation.

As we understand Education as a task of transformation of life to the better, although considering the diversity and inequality of situations, MULTIEDUCATION, has so far answered our needs, extending its possibilities to the field of MEDIA EDUCATION and MEDIA FOR EDUCATION through the products and actions of MULTIRIO and RIOMIDIA.

The main Obstacles we have encountered and, to a certain extent still find, are: 1. Teachers’ pre/service and in/service training weaknesses; 2. The fight for adequate budgets, stemming from the 25%, which are constitutionally dedicated to Municipal Public Schools; 3. The Municipal Schools structures and technological resources; 4. The Mayor and Secretary of Education engagement with a sound public policy for Education integrating Media Education and Media for Education; 5. The permanence and improvement of sound, consistent and consequent Public Policies for Education, integrating Media to the pedagogical practices throughout the whole spectrum of the Municipal System of Education; 6. The challenge to convince the press and other media representatives of the importance of these Educational Policies; 7. To involve other stakeholders, either in the public or private context to empower the School’s in the Media Age.

The main Advances we are experiencing are: 1. We have learned how to work with Media Education and Media for Education in the public municipal context; 2. We have done in/process research which has allowed us to understand Teachers and Students demands for products and pedagogical actions integrating media; 3. We are developing research strategies to assess the impact of media on Teachers and Students processes of constituting knowledge and values; 4. We are discovering which media and media/genders are better to face diverse difficulties in the School’ s processes of education; 5. We are contributing to many other processes on Media Education and Media for Education in different regions of Brazil and abroad; 6. We are learning how to work collaboratively with other Media Education movements and institutions in order to impact commercial media in our country; 7. We became part of a large network of Teachers, Students, Professors, Researchers, and Media Professionals in Brazil, Latin America and other continents exchanging experiences and actions, which feedback positively with our own policies.

As of now the New Trends for the Future point to:

1. The need for Universities’ engagements, through research and new knowledge generation with the Public Network of Schools, where the majority of Students and Teachers are; 2. The need for appropriate and enduring improved Public Policies integrating Media with Education; 3. The constant need to identify Public and Private Funds for Research Developments and Budgetary Resources.

****************