Ágora

A few months ago and by chance we (the Canarian group) learned of a study by the Government of the Canary Islands on school dropout for reasons of discrimination (of all kinds: geographic, cultural for migratory reasons and others). The high numbers of abandonment in the Canary Islands led us to search for community sources, such as EuroStat, which showed us data at the European level on the matter that were slightly lower, but just as worrying for us. If we add to this that the Canarian group is a group from the Island of El Hierro, what we explain here is contextualized. Analyzing these data led us to a conclusion: racism, xenophobia, insularism and ruralism are the worst enemies of democracy because one of the most important democracy pilars is equal opportunities for all.

Analyzing those results was especially painful when we contrasted them with a history graduate. This professional enlightened us on the relationship between these factors and school dropout. In this way we discover that the young people of Europe are not only being victims of the system, but we are also not fully developing our potential, our knowledge and abilities, our skills and competences. We already know that content is developed in schools following the scheme of formal education, promoting knowledge around memory capacity, mathematical and linguistic skills. But there is a large group of young people who have abandoned educational itineraries for the reasons mentioned and who nevertheless possess extensive knowledge in other aspects, a set of valuable skills and abilities. This is where the concept of this project takes value, which takes us from a discriminatory scenario to value our "non-formal" knowledge.