This charter, developed from the modern school charter 1968 of the ICEM (Institut Coopératif de l’Ecole Moderne), is a base for all the Freinet movments, who are members of the FIMEM (Féderation Internationale de l’Ecole Moderne – Pedagogie Freinet). 1. Education is about development and growth, and not about regimentation, dependency or the accumulation of knowledge. We search for ways of working and resources, systems of organization and ways of living within the school and the society, securing development and growth as best we can. Supported by the work of Freinet and strong from our own experiences, we are clear about our influence on children and adults, but also on that of the educators, who will play a new role in society. 2. We are against any indoctrination. We do not presume to define in advance what the child we educate will become. We do not prepare the child for serving and continuing the world of today, but for the construction of a society that will guarantee their development in the best possible way. We refuse to form their spirit to predefined dogmas. We apply ourselves to making our pupils conscious and responsible adults, so they can build a world where war, racism, discrimination and exploitation will be banished. 3. We reject the thought that education could exist on itself, separated from the great political and social tendencies, which define it. The social and political background, the circumstances of life and work of the parents and the children are decisive influences in the formation of the younger generation. To educators, to parents and everybody who means well with the school we must point out the need to fight the social and political struggle at the side of the labourers/workers, so that the public education can fulfil its excellent pedagogical task.<?> In this spirit every Freinet worker shall act to their own ideological, philosophical and political preferences, so that the demands of education can combine with the greatest human ambition: the search for happiness, culture and peace. But in view of a trend of the wordwide opening of all sectors of life (including the education) to the money market the FIMEM has also to react political: Together with other groups and we will fight for a society that the allowed the unresticted right of education for all people and that stays for an education for peace and tolerance and is against racism, discrimination and exploitation. 4. The school of tomorrow will be the school of work. Creative work undertaken by groups from free choice, is the basis of the education of the people. It will provide us with the things we need to realise the potential of the children. Through work and responsibility a school will emerge that will be integrated into the social environment, from which it is now arbitrarily detached. 5. The school directs itself to the child. The child itself builds, with our help, on its own personality. It is difficult to learn how to know the spirit of the child, its striving and its desires and to base our pedagogical behaviour on this knowledge. But the 'pedagogie Freinet' has an effect of spiritual and pedagogical recovery, because it leans on free expression and the natural methods, because it prepares a helping/challenging environment. An environment with materials and techniques which admits a natural, vivid and cultural education. And this all helps the child to build its own personality. 6. Being on the move is the first condition to modernise the school by cooperation. In the Freinet movement there is no dogma or system we want to ask someone to endorse. On the contrary, we organize for all the departments, that are active in our movement, the continuous confrontation with ideas, research and experiences. We keep our pedagogical movement alive on the principles which have proved effective in group experiences: constructive labour, plain speaking, free activities in sympathy with the community, freedom to choose the work in the midst of a group with a discipline everybody agrees on. 7. The “pedagogie Freinet” is a pedagogie for all learners without exception Since her start “pedagogie Freinet” was allways a movement of the pedagical renewal of the public school (in a laicistic sense). In the meantime there we have also a lot of peoples in our movements, who work in privat schools. Together with them we think furthermore, that the school should not divide in <?> origin, sex, cultur, handicapes, money possibilities, … 8. Our school movement wants to maintain bonds of friendship and to cooperate. Striving to do the work for the public state school as well as possible and to accelerate the modernization of education, we are in favour of, in all independence, a loyal and real cooperation with all those (humanistic <?>) organisations that are engaged in the same struggle. 9. Our relations to the administration. We are willing to share our experiences in educational innovation to colleagues, in our work groups, on teacher training colleges, during practical courses on local or national level. But we wish to maintain our freedom by helping and criticising, as the cooperative way of working of our movement demands. 10. The 'Freinet pedagogy' is in its nature international. As educators and teachers first of all we work in our classes/ groups with our learners (children, pupils, students,..). But this work can only be done with effort, if we are organizised in regional, national and international groups. In this sense the FIMEM as an assoziation of national (or rather regional) Freinet groups is a must in the fight for an education for citizenship, peace, tolerance, self responsibility,… Decided at the General Assembly 2006, Saint Louis, Senegal