WHAT WE LEARN

A “Learning Society” needs concepts for education, which develop permanently, and educational content that lives up to the expectations of a “Knowledge Society“ of the future.

The UN passed the “AGENDA 21″ at the Environmental Conference 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. This agenda determines that schools of the future have to put environmental issues at the centre of all learning. This would be the “indispensable pre-requisite for creating an ecological and ethical consciousness. Commercial development shall no longer be realized at the cost of nature, but with it.

To meet the new requirements of a future-oriented education, we have developed an Internal Curriculum that is constantly being expanded and refined by our team of educators and the help of experts. This Internal Curriculum complements and deepens the State-based curricula and offers the possibility to integrate relevant life topics from the immediate region into the learning.

The Escola da Esperança is located within the context of the Peace Research Village Tamera and the rural Alentejo region. Issues of key importance to Tamera, such as sustainable ecology, applied permaculture, the establishment and maintenance of cross-cultural networks, community-building knowledge, social skills, training in personal responsibility, non-violent communication with animals, etc. form part of the internal curriculum. Children are regularly introduced to issues of the surrounding region through visiting regional cultural events and businesses such bakeries and other small scale enterprises, through networking with the neighbouring communities, their schools and cultural institutions.

The learning languages are English, Portuguese and German. It is important to us that the language learning is delivered by native speakers.