Mr. Santiago Rincon-Gallardo (Moderator)

PhD Student, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Santiago Rincon-Gallardo (Mexico) got his master's degree in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) in 2007. He is currently a doctoral candidate at HGSE. Before coming to Harvard, he led Convivencia Educativa, A.C, an NGO that provides training and on-site coaching to teachers and educators in Mexican public schools. He has co-authored the books "Comunidad de Aprendizaje. Como hacer de la educacion basica un bien valioso y compartido" (Learning Communities. How to make public education a valuable and shared good) and "Ensenar y Aprender con Interes" (Teaching and Learning with Interest), published in Mexico by Siglo XXI Editores.

Mr. Jean Luis Auduc

University of Creteil

Mr. Jean Louis Auduc's work focused a lot on violence in schools and civic education. Mr. Auduc is holder of the aggregation in History and taught in high school for a long time. Since 1993, he is the Vice President of the Teacher Training University of Creteil, which belong to the same cluster as Paris 1st district (Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maitres de Creteil). He was first in charge of the high school teacher-training program and since 2003, he is in charge of the primary school teacher training program. In 2001-2002 he was manager of the committee on violence in school for the Ministry of professional training. He worked in partnership with the University of National Education (Ecole Superieure de l'Education Nationale) and participated in the writing of several pedagogical journals. Mr. Auduc published several books on the French education system, on teaching children with difficulties and on violence in schools. He also managed a project for the development of textbooks on civic education for high schools and published several article on parents-teachers relationship and on the complex issue of secularism (Laicite) and citizenship and youth.

Mr. Horacio Alvarez Marinelli

Ministry of Education, Guatemala

Horacio Alvarez Marinelli is a Fulbright Scholar and holds a Master of Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School, University of Texas at Austin; a BA in Economics and a Certificate in Political Science from the University Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala. He has eleven years of experience in education policy, reform and decentralization; public sector administration, planning, financial management, accounting and information systems; organizational and institutional reform; international cooperation and development, and research and communications. He is the adviser to the Minister and Director of Planning and Budgeting at the Ministry of Education in Guatemala. He was the Finance and Accounts Officer at the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva, Switzerland and the Director of Finance and Administration for the Education State Program PRONADE in Guatemala. Furthermore he is Assistant Professor for Public Administration at the Institute for Political Science and International Relations at the University Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala. He is author of an exhaustive range of research articles, policy documents, international and consulting reports on education, international finance, management, politics and international development for the Guatemalan Education Ministry, USAID, the UN and MGT of America amongst others.

Dr. Amitabha Mukerjee

Indian Institute of Technology

Professor Mukerjee is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. Professor Mukerjee’s areas of interest are developmental intelligence, such as artificial intelligence, computer vision and micro-robots. Intelligence arises as a result of a developmental process involving sensory interpretation that lead to incrementally detailed models of the world, leading to motor and linguistic cognition. In his department Professor Mukerjee developed his own model of dynamic visual attention which generates language at several levels, a computational model built on vision (tracking and attention) and natural language processing. He is currently on the editorial board of the Journal on Spatial Computation and Cognition. In 2000, he was the recipient of the Vikram Sarabhai Award in the area of electronics, informatics, telematics, and automation. “Hands-On Digital” is Mr Mukerjee’s vision for education. Schooling, especially in India, is driven too much by examinations based on rote learning. His “Build Robots, Create Science (BRICS)“ program for schools promotes learning through interactive, hands-on model building.

http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~amit/

Mr. John Taylor Gatto

Teacher/Writer

John Taylor Gatto was a public junior high school teacher in New York City for 30 years, resigning on the Op Ed Page of the Wall Street Journal on July 25th, 1991, saying he was no longer willing to hurt children. At the time of this surprising finale he held the title "New York State Teacher of the Year" awarded by the State education department. On three prior occasions he had been named "New York City Teacher of the Year". Since leaving the classroom, Gatto has traveled nearly three million miles, speaking against forced schooling as a bridge to 19th century Prussia and arguing for what he calls "Open Source Education", a kind of anti-system in which teaching is de-professionalized and education removed from the hands of formula-makers. Mr. Gatto has given the keynote speech at education conferences across the world. He is particularly well-known in the homeschooling community world-wide. His book, Dumbing Us Down (1992) is believed to have put the now familiar locution into general circulation. His huge work, The Underground history of American Education (rev. ed. 2003) established the philosophical/political connection between our form of schooling and experiments in social control launched in Prussia, Saxony, and Hanover to ensure a predictable proletariat. Mr. Gatto has spoken at the White House, at NASA Goddard Space Center, before Senate committees, and before a variety of audiences who would, as he puts it "kill one another if assembled in one room". His next book, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A School Teacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Modern Schooling will be published in September of 2008 and may be ordered in advance on www.johntaylorgatto.com.  

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