The right to preschool education in São Tomé and Príncipe: dilemmas and challenges in the conception of a legal framework

Abstract

This paper falls within the work of cooperation with the government of São Tomé and Príncipe and with the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), whose purpose is to create the Preschool Education Act and the Statutes of Education Institutions operating in the same level of education. The complexity and the relevance of this work to the present and future of the children of São Tomé and Príncipe demand from us a huge responsibility concerning its realization and a critic surveillance regarding the potential effects of “contamination” with transfrontier political guidelines and of “policy borrowings,” which do not have into consideration the realities of the country, its cultures, its different social conditions and conceptions of childhood and of family, and its different patterns of organization and of intrafamily relationships. We adopted, in our approach to this project, the starting point, theoretically and ethically grounded, that it was necessary to free ourselves of a adultcentric point of view of childhood and of apriorisms that are stuck to the image of the country. Our analysis centers on two dimensions: (1) On the dilemmas that we face in the task of conceiving the “policies” of child education to the child population of an African country, in our condition of European researchers and teachers; and (2) In the process of shared making of that legal framework, focused on the realities of the country, especially on childhood, family, women, and labor conditions. A debate is going on about the proposed solutions that have been suggested, which, in an articulate fashion, respect children’s right to education and leisure, value children’s experiences, and attend the interests of families and of the community development.