Until now no alternative proposal for incorporating the masses into educational processes has been consolidated. However, the processes of political democratization which have been seen in Latin America in recent years have opened space for the elaboration of new paradigms. The disjunctive is either to give in to liberalizing proposals of globalization, consolidating education as a commodity, or to return to the Freirian concept of education with a view to contributing to the construction of citizenship and participation. The challenge for CONFINTEA VI is to construct syntheses capable of achieving consensus on contents and methods for adult and youth education in addition to attending to the urgencies, understanding education not as a cost or investment but as a right or service, and to promote the construction of public spaces in which the social totality is built on the specificity of each group in the context of multiculturalism.
adult and youth education; new paradigms; multiculturalism