EDITORIAL / EDITORIAL Education

for informed citizenship Since its foundation in 1960, the Instituto Materno Infantil de Pernambuco (IMIP), now known as the Instituto Materno Infantil Prof. Fernando Figueira (IMIP), has assumed as one of its key roles that of training health professionals, under the aegis of a technical and methodological focus that is not based on submission to the values and the demands of the free market. The proposal was to regenerate the paradigms for teaching in the light of the real contemporary world, valuing a doctrine and practice of teaching and learning that goes beyond the classroom walls and incorporates humanistic, ethical and communitarian prin-ciples, in such a way as to achieve a profile of professionals who meet the needs of social development and are sensitive to the need to care for the poorest members of society. It was thus that the need was established to promote close ties between the biological and social sci-ences, so that the institution is better able to share knowledge with others and develop a genuine commit-ment to changing society for the better, raising the awareness of students and teachers alike that the quan-tity of information is not in itself a measure of quality and that the training process is, in some sense, a way of fostering change. Gradually, the IMIP has pressed forward with laying the foundations through training for a technically reliable, effective, ethical and humanistic practice that keeps pace with scientific and tech