Organizing a conference on education means more than bringing specialists together or discussing methodologies. It is also an act of courage in choosing the subjects brought into debate—subjects that invite reflection on the society we aspire to build.
It is in this spirit that the second Insular Conference, Looking to the Future—Innovating in Pedagogical Practice, to be held on October 16 and 17 in Praia da Vitória, deserves my recognition.
To speak of education today is to speak of inclusion, which requires the courage to confront the realities of migrant children at a time when narratives of rejection, suspicion, and exclusion are gaining ground. There is a profound difference between discussing the challenges of inclusion and turning difference into a threat. As a place of encounter and freedom, the school must do more than impart subject matter: it must also teach sharing and respect.
Placing the inclusion of migrant children at the heart of our reflection is therefore essential. Not because simple answers exist, but because these challenges must be discussed with knowledge, composure, and humanity.
The same holds true when we speak of science. At a time when scientific knowledge faces misinformation and denialism, defending science does not mean blindly believing everything presented as scientific. It means teaching students to question, verify sources, distinguish evidence from opinion, and understand that knowledge evolves. A school that cultivates critical thought must neither fear doubt nor abandon evidence.
And there are subjects more difficult still, because they touch the most intimate dimensions of family life: the expectations that take shape during pregnancy, and the suffering that may arise when the person growing before us does not become the person we imagined. There is a silent grief when the dreams a family has projected do not coincide with reality. This may concern an educational, professional, or emotional path, or a way of being in the world. To speak of this grief is not to legitimize rejection. It is to make room to understand pain, dismantle expectations, and learn to love without demanding that anyone become the person others had envisioned.
This is what education must do: replace expectation with listening, judgment with understanding, and exclusion with belonging.
In my view, the greatest virtue of a conference lies not in offering definitive answers, but in having the courage to ask unsettling questions. What kind of school do we want? Whom do we leave behind? What do we do when difference challenges us? How do we distinguish knowledge from belief? And how far is society prepared to accept that children and young people do not exist to fulfill the plans others have drawn up for them?
In an age of hurried pronouncements, certainties, and boundaries between “us” and “others,” creating spaces for reflection is an act of resistance to simplification. Education needs knowledge and courage—to welcome, to question, and to listen. Above all, it needs to understand that no child should ever have to prove that they deserve to belong.
Looking to the Future is more than the name of a conference. It is a responsibility, because it means deciding, in the present, what kind of society we wish to bequeath to the generation now in our schools.
For me, there is no greater pedagogical innovation than educating for a world in which no one must cease to be who they are in order to belong.
Alexandra Manes is from Flores Island but lives on Terceira Island in the Azores. She is a regular contributor to several Azorean newspapers, a political and cultural activist, and has served in the Azorean Parliament.
NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, providing the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the Azores with a sense of the significant perspectives on some of the archipelago’s issues.
Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).