Eusko Ikaskuntza-Sociedad de Estudios Vascos, since its foundation, has been working and knowing the challenges and cohesion needs of the Basque Country. A hundred years later, the commitment was ratified at the Centenary Congress of 2018, at the then announced Oñate Declaration and in the White Paper of the Basque Territories. In the four years since then we have been immersed in an atmosphere of more intense change. The technological revolution, the eco-social and energy transition, the geostrategic reorganization of the world, migratory flows, changes in value… In this convulsive juncture, our country must make a deep and comprehensive reflection to endure in the future.

Eusko Ikaskuntza is working to increase the integral cohesion of the Basque territories and society. On the one hand, by making popular reflections that take into account the peculiarities of the Basque territories, while focusing on the integrity of our people. On the other hand, through institutions, actors, experts and citizens, reflection and joint work. For this, once again, Eusko Ikaskuntza will bring its added value: it is an institution rooted in all the Basque territories, to which the legitimacy of creating spaces for popular reflection in the whole and in the whole of Euskal Herria is recognized. In fact, Eusko Ikaskuntza has the opportunity to overcome the limited areas of the various institutional actors and structures, and, while maintaining his autonomy to draw his course, he has repeatedly expressed his willingness to promote collaboration. The results of the work carried out over these four years, the future proposals and the commitments made, will be announced in the next call to Basque society, the XIX Basque Study Congress. Congress, to be held in October 2024.

The new mantra has become an “adaptation” in times of uncertainty. Remembering philosopher Marina Garcés: flexibility and plasticity are not the same. There are different attitudes towards the future in these two concepts: adapting to what holds for us a future that we cannot decide, whether it is necessary to lose identity in the name of plasticity, or to draw with some flexibility the future that is in our hands, without losing what we are and what we have on the way. The key is education to develop flexibility that is not “plastic”. In education lies the dialogue, the debate and the conflict between the conceptions in society: who teaches and learns who. Their environment brings together ideology, culture, languages and different socio-economic models. Tomorrow's society is in the place of education. This is one of the areas in which Eusko Ikaskuntza is developing his comprehensive work.

We are writing together and together the White Paper on Basque Education. Take the shared framework that long-term education should have. To carry out this broad popular reflection, strengthening collective commitment is essential to us. For this, we have a participatory process. We will collect different speeches and reach broad consensus that we will identify as guiding principles for the extension of proposals. There is no monopoly of Eusko Ikaskuntza on the subject. The Basque educational community, the various parties, trade unions and social partners have recently launched numerous diagnoses, reflections and proposals. Eusko Ikaskuntza-Sociedad de Estudios Vascos wants to dialogue the work of these popular reflections to reach shared proposals.

We have common cross-cutting issues relating to education in all Basque territories, and our main roadmap is to encourage reflection on them. It will offer ways to represent the foundations of a hypothetical “educational system” encompassing the countries that make up Euskal Herria. Educational cohesion will bring about the consolidation of Basque territory and society. Just as a comprehensive and shared analysis is essential for the generation of transformative proposals and conditions for their implementation in the educational field, it is necessary to recognize and consolidate the institutional structures. Because we want to make feasible proposals, effective proposals that get public and social policies into society.

We started our journey with the “100 bridges” forum meeting in September 2021. Taking as a guide the highlights gathered along the way, we want to make a qualitative leap in the phase we have just begun. We want to add to the Basque educational practice the systematization of knowledge and methodological rigor to this unprecedented collective exercise of the Basque Country. And because cohesion is built in practice, we go down to the practice of each educational stage to work and systematize cohesive initiatives. On the one hand, from the perspective of a system that aspires to focus the Basque culture and Basque culture and overcoming the fragmentation of territoriality, we will conduct focused debates of specific stages (Child and Primary Education; Compulsory Secondary Education and Baccalaureate; Vocational Training; University-Higher Degree) and, on the other, we will develop the shared definition of the essential structural transversal lines.

We have formed four permanent groups of educational stages, united by experts and agents from all territories. We have taken up the axes for working on cohesive proposals and are ready to start the next momentum. Beyond the educational community, we intend to collect the contributions of experts, agents, institutions and citizens who share their concern about the subject. As has already been said, the commitments to be made regarding these contributions and proposals are the XIX of Eusko Ikaskuntza of October 2024. They will be published in Congress. Under the motto What unites us, Congress will offer cohesion proposals and paths for new pacts in the Basque Country. We are going to share what is generated from today until now, contrasting content, accumulating strength.

Eusko Ikaskuntza Education Team: Beatriz Akizu, Nekane Altzelai, Jose Manuel Bujanda, Idoia Fernandez, Hur Gorostiaga, Maialen Idoate-Pery, Maite Larrañaga, Alba Madinabeitia, Nora Salbotx, Gemma Zabaleta, Mario Zubiaga