Event Highlights: Regional Launch: NORRAG Special Issue 10 in Spanish
On 6 May 2025, NORRAG and the Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento (UNGS), Argentina, launched the Spanish-language edition of NSI 10, Education for Societal Transformation: Alternatives for a Just Future. The event was opened by Felicitas Acosta (UNGS), NORRAG’s Regional Coordinator for Latin America and editor of the Spanish edition.
The issue, animated by the Transformative Alternatives Project (TAP), asks whether education can contribute to transforming societies grappling with climate crisis, structural inequality, and resurgent authoritarianism. Drawing on André Gorz’s concept of “non-reformist reforms,” it brings together scholarship and practice that challenge –rather than adjust– existing structures. The Spanish edition includes specially commissioned articles on democratic schools in Mexico (Carlos Ornelas) and a regional synthesis by Acosta, alongside selected contributions from the original English edition for their particular relevance to Latin America.
Seven contributors with strong ties to the region presented at the launch, sharing experiences from Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil. Across the presentations, several threads recurred: the transformative power of art, storytelling, and reading as educational tools; the potential of alliances between schools, community organisations, and social movements; the importance of documenting and circulating practices in action; and the relationship between scale, resource distribution, and political conditions when thinking seriously about transformation. The event closed with a reflection on what it takes –materially, technically, politically, and imaginatively– to build educational alternatives that do not merely adjust existing systems, but dare to question them at their foundations.
