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Activities - Gatherings
Meeting of the Triglav Circle at 100 Acres
- March 2002
Pictured above are some of the
members of the Triglav Circle who recently met at the
100 Acres retreat center in New Boston, NH, USA. The
discussion centered around the topics below. Notes from
the discussion will be posted soon on the Web site in
the White Papers section.
EDUCATION AND THE ETHICAL
AND
SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF LIFE IN SOCIETY
Topics
for Discussion and Programme of Work
There are several reasons for choosing this topic. After
several years of reflection on the pledge made by world
leaders in Copenhagen on the occasion of the Social
Summit that our societies must respond more effectively
to the material and spiritual needs of individuals,
their families and the communities in which they live,"
a discussion on education seems timely, if not overdue.
Attaining the goal of "universal and equitable
access to quality education " is one of the commitments
made at the Social Summit.
On the other hand, education has
currently a rather low status on the international agenda.
In the United Nations Millenium Declaration, adopted
in September 2000, as an expression of the "collective
responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity,
equality and equity," education is mentioned only
once. And the wording is within the confines of these
"targets" that the international organizations
are keen to adopt and prompt to ignore: "to ensure
that, by the same date (2015) children everywhere, boys
and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course
of primary schooling and that girls and boys will have
equal access to all levels of education."
Meanwhile, the United States of
America has yet to reestablish its membership in UNESCO.
Thus, reflection on what looks increasingly like benign
neglect of education in the circles of political power
is appropriate. Additional reasons for choosing this
topic is that Denmark offers a strong tradition of intellectual
and reformist interest in education –suffice to
mention Søren Kierkegaard and Nikolaj Grundtvig;
commitment to social progress in poor regions of the
world through its generous policies of development cooperation;
and stable and democratic political arrangements providing
exceptional levels of social justice and economic efficiency.
Proposed topics and questions for discussion
Moral and spiritual
education in contemporary societies
• What are the main features of the situation in
different parts of the word?
• Should ethics be a separate discipline, or a
dimension of teaching, or both?
• Under what conditions could universally-based
ethics and ethics reflecting cultural pluralism be compatible?
• What are the legacies of Kierkegaard and Grundtvig?
• How does one bring back a sense of the sacred
in a secular, scientific society?
Education and ethnic
and religious conflicts
• Are elements for the prevention of violent conflicts,
and for reconciliation, to be found in education curricula
and educational systems?
• Should spiritual and religious matters be taught
in schools?
• Under which conditions could secularized and
liberal systems of education offer the best protection
against the nurturing of violence and of various forms
of intolerance and rejection of the "other"?
Education and the trends
towards a global market society
• Has education become a commodity?
• Should education also be globalized?
• Is education, seen as the pursuit of knowledge
for its own sake the best antidote to a market society?
Comments on some aspects of
these questions:
Moral and spiritual education
in contemporary societies
To enrich the dominant discourse on what constitutes
a good life and a successful society means to assume
that a dominant discourse exists. Furthermore it assumes
that this discourse is of Western origin and universal
appeal. It is focused on the acquisition, consumption
or otherwise private appropriation of material goods
and amenities. This model is propagated by various forces,
parties to the dissemination of market economy principles
and global capitalism. It identifies happiness with
the satisfaction of material desires and, at the same,
time relies on dissatisfaction because economic growth
requires rapid obsolescence of goods and services and
the creation of new "new wants." Individuals
are requested to adapt and adjust.
In this competitive and insecure,
yet complacent, milieu, moral and spiritual education
have no obvious role nor legitimacy. Law, almost alone,
delineates the frontiers separating the "permitted
from the prohibited." The right and the wrong as
well as the sacred and the nonmaterial are either matters
of opinion and power or have no place in mainstream
political and social discourse. Prescriptions and recipes
for applied ethics are numerous and generate lucrative
professions. However useful --for instance to combat
corruption-- these efforts are limited and rendered
fragile by their pragmatic and utilitarian character.
In liberal societies, the teaching of morals and spiritual
subjects is left to churches and parents. Churches have
lost a great part of their influence and parents are
now inclined to conceive their role in non-prescriptive
terms. One has the impression that many societies are
morally surviving on a dwindling stock of "moral
and spiritual capital" inherited from past generations.
In other societies, moral and spiritual education is
imposed by state or religious authorities leaving little
room for individual autonomy and frequent violations
of the provisions of the International Bill of Human
Rights.
Is such a diagnosis roughly accurate?
Are there signs of renewed interest in re-establishing
the foundations for moral education? Has the de-construction
movement been successful enough to allow for a new search
for roots of ethical behavior and spiritual research?
Does the concept of natural law have any relevance in
modern society? Examples of theoretical insights as
well as concrete initiatives in the teaching of ethics
and the awakening of spiritual sense would be most useful.
Education and ethnic
and religious conflicts
The frequency of violent conflicts stemming from ethnic
or religious differences, or, more often, taking the
form of such ethnic and religious fights but resulting
from traditional misuse of power and manipulation of
opinions, is one of the unfortunate and bloody characteristics
of the present time. Comparisons with the relative intensity
of such conflicts in the past are of limited interest.
The brutal fact challenging any claim of the advent
of a peaceful and prosperous world is that raw passions
can be easily stirred up. There are also societies and
regions which seem, for the time being, because of their
political maturity and/or prosperity, relatively immune
to the temptations of violence and fanaticism. And recent
examples of difficult but successful processes of reconciliation
have generated great hope in the capacity of enlightened
and determined leadership to transform hate, contempt
and resentment into forgiveness and cooperation.
In the prevention of violent conflicts, internal or
external, and to bring about lasting reconciliation
and peace, what roles can an enriched education play?
Conversely, is the absence of generalized teaching on
respect and love for one’s neighbor and on the
inanity of the use of violence for settling differences,
a plausible explanation for wars, genocide and other
aberrations of human behavior? For example, has the
teaching of history and civics in the countries which
are now partners in the European Union changed significantly
during the second part of the 20th century? Have such
changes been at least a useful complement to greater
cooperation in the economic and political domains? What
can be said of other examples in other regions?
In the already mentioned United Nations Millenium Declaration,
tolerance is one of the six values presented as "fundamental"
and "essential to international relations in the
twenty-first century," and it is said that "a
culture of peace and dialogue among all civilizations
should be actively promoted." Justice is not mentioned
as a value and "culture of peace" is not further
defined. Education is not mentioned as one of the paths
to such a culture. The section of the document which
then translates "shared values into actions"
in the domains of "peace, security and disarmament"
contains only traditional elements of international
relations and the language pertains to the diplomatic
culture. Does this truncated view of the "conditions
for peace" reflect limitations of an organization
which is forced to operate under the rule of consensus?
Or is there an unspoken "division of labor"
between intergovernmental organizations dealing with
"serious" matters and non-governmental organizations
and other social movements raising issues which are
not- or not yet- on the international agenda?
Is the teaching of the spiritual or religious foundations
of the active belief in the fundamental equality and
fundamental worth of all human beings impossible in
secularized institutions of learning and also in secularized
institutions responsible for disseminating universal
values? Has secular humanism failed to address the virtues
that define harmonious societies and a peaceful world?
Is education conceived as a vehicle to promote the liberal
ideal of individuals pursuing their own interests leading
to a moral impasse?Education and the trend towards a
global market society
There are proposals to treat education
as a "service"- in the economic meaning of
the term- and to subject the institutions that deliver
it to the "disciplines" of free trade and
competition as elaborated by the World Trade Organization.
If one considers the limited support received by the
few countries that are opposed to the same treatment
of "cultural goods and services," this next
step in the marketisation of societies is a threat that
ought to be taken seriously.
But globalization, besides the spreading of global capitalism,
is also the advent of a more open world with greatly
facilitated exchanges and communications. Education
should benefit from this. Are there examples? Through
the dissemination of computers and the use of Internet?
Through intensified exchanges between students and professors?
Is the curriculum of business schools generally uniform
throughout the world? Could education be globalized
in other ways, for example through a redistribution
of resources? What is the philosophy of UNESCO with
regard to globalization?
Globalization also means the use of English as a universal
language. Is it possible to accept this convenience
while creating the possibilities for other languages
to flourish?
Should educational aims be reassessed in a globalizing
world? According to Samuel Hazo, State Poet of Pennsylvania
and professor emeritus at Duquesne University:
"College was once defined as a time when students
were briefly absented from the present in order to discover
the past so that they could more wisely face the present
in the future…The current collegiate goal is not
the beginning of wisdom but proficiency (in marketable
skills), not breadth of knowledge but adjustment, not
cultural understanding but social (upward) mobility.
In brief, the goal of graduating free men and women
(intellectually free) has been replaced by giving degrees
to instantly employable trainees. What if anything is
wrong with this? Nothing is wrong with it, if you believe
that it’s quite acceptable to graduate instant
earners who can’t write, who can’t understand
and feel no need to understand history, literature and
even geography of their own country, who don’t
know nor care to know another language (70% of the graduates
of America’s 3,000 or more colleges and universities
earn degrees without being required to study a foreign
language), and whose main goal in life is not regenerating
or contributing to their society, but retiring from
it in comfort as early as possible."
— excerpted from an article in the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
Is the increasing trend toward identification of education
with training prevalent around the world? Is utilitarianism
the necessary corollary of the primacy of individual
freedom? Could education contribute to the emergence
of different loyalties, different levels of citizenship
that seem to be called for by the desirable emergence
of a world political community and the equally desirable
maintenance of the nation-state? What should be the
goal of living and how can it best be served by education?
Addressing these questions, should the United Nations-
notably the United Nations University- and the UNESCO
take initiatives in this direction? |
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