This Toolkit was developed as an outcome of the Study Session ‘Pluriverse – Peaceful societies with oppression-free education’ organised by the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU) within the Youth for Democracy programme of the Council of Europe under the involvement of the Global Students Forum (GSF) and the All-Africa Students Union (AASU) .
In May of 2022, the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions, together with the Global Student Forum, organised a week-long Study Session at the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg with the support of the Council of Europe. Around 30 participants, student representatives, and activists from all across the world took part in discussions on decolonising school curricula as a way to build more inclusive, less oppressive societies.
The Session produced several outcomes. One such outcome is this toolkit, serving as a guide for putting the outcomes of the Study Session into practice. Student representatives that took part to implement the action plans they drafted during the event also organised their own initiatives aimed at mobilising their communities and spreading the Study Session’s findings.
Content-wise, it was not only the knowledge about the history of colonisation, intercultural perspectives, and the theory of oppression in education that emerged, but also the key attitudes, skills, and other competences needed for further advocacy, with special regard given to methodological diversity. We believe that to build inclusive and peaceful societies, one must acknowledge and deconstruct the scourges of the past, and, with this objective in mind, the topic of decolonisation cannot go unnoticed.
