EDUCATION FOR INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING

 EDUCATION FOR INTERNATIONAL
 UNDERSTANDING

Contents

Why this brochure? p. 3

Foreword: a common will p. 4

Towards the new millennium-an idea gaining ground p. 5

For a new philosophy of education p. 10

A world that is many and one: the other's viewpoint p. 17

Development and a culture of peace p. 24

From rhetoric to practice for an applied peace p. 29

Conquering new areas for education for peace p. 45

The author expresses her gratitude to the UNICEF Office in Geneva for allowing free access to its photo library in order to illustrate this brochure.

Published in 1996 by the International Bureau of Education, P.O. Box 199, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland

Printed in France by SADAG, Bellegarde

Why this brochure?

This brochure is part of the follow-up to the forty-fourth session of the International Conference on Education (ICE), which was held in 1994 in Geneva on the theme: `Appraisal and perspectives of education for international understanding'. While borrowing extensively from conference material, such as the speeches by heads of delegations, replies by Member States to a pre-Conference survey by the International Bureau of Education (IBE), national reports, round-table summaries, etc., the style of the brochure is fairly direct, not restricted by the rules generally imposed on official documents for major conferences, thanks to which the author has been able to convey a wealth and diversity of ideas, experience and opinions on matters of such importance for the countries of the world today as human rights, peace and democracy. Apart from neatly summing up the items on the agenda, most of the chapters in this document contain boxes giving an `action spectrum' or `viewpoints' based on innovatory, original experiments, and a selection of extracts taken from the speeches of ministers present at the ICE. The brochure is intended for a broad range of readers, especially teachers and students.

It also retraces the development of UNESCO's programme and that of its predecessor, the International Bureau of Education, which has been part of the organization since 1969. While the brochure does not attempt to give a systematic, detailed presentation of UNESCO's programme the area of international understanding, it does recall the most significant events which have occurred along the wait has been more than seventy years since the International Bureau of Education was first set up in 1925 towards peace and democracy. A further source of inspiration has also been the philosophy of education offered in the report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century, which was published at the beginning of this year (see Delors in the references).

The author herself is Lucie-Mami Noor Nkake, our colleague from the World Association for the School as an Instrument of Peace. While expressing its gratitude for her contribution, the International Bureau of Education wishes to remind readers that she is responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this publication and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO:IBE and do not commit the Organization. The designations employed and the presentation of the material do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO:IBE regarding the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Foreword: a common will

The forty-fourth session of the International Conference on Education (ICE), organized by the International Bureau of Education (IBE), was held in Geneva from 3 to 8 October 1994. It was attended by nearly 800 participants from the world of education, including 102 ministers.

The major debates on the general theme of the Conference, `Appraisal and perspectives of education for international understanding', were introduced successively by Federal Mayor, Director-General of UNESCO, James Grant, Director-General of the United Nations Chileans' Fund (UNICEF), Jacques Dolors, Chairman of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century, and the five chairpersons of the Conference's preparatory meetings.

The ministers of education, together with the educators and non- governmental organizations taking part in the Conference, reviewed the achievements of education for international understanding and identified the remaining obstacles in its way. They noted the urgent need to include the subject in school curricula and in teacher- training courses.

Despite the complexity of the challenges facing a rapidly changing world, the range of actions described in this work reflects a common will and offers further suggestions for a ,new philosophy of education', which would incorporate some positive moral values common to all countries. At this dawning of the twenty-first century, which is so often mentioned, bringing people closer together through what they have in common, through the incomparable wealth of their diversity, could be one of the keys to the creation of `A lifelong school, open to the world, in the service of mankind' (Jacques Muhlethaler, *1 founder of the World Association for the School as an Instrument of Peace).

Towards the new millennium an idea gaining ground

From 1925 to 1974, the founders of peace through education

In 1925, at a time when the bitter memories of the First World War and the destruction it caused still haunted people's minds, the prospect of another conflict was already looming on the horizon. More than ever, the need was felt to establish an institution in the service of education for closer contact and harmony between peoples, the precon- ditions of international understanding. It was against this backdrop, where the hopes of peace were mingled with the fear of war, that the International Bureau of Education (IBE) was founded.

Four years later, in response to a pressing desire to alleviate the crisis which was gradually adding plausibility to the idea of another war, the founders of the Bureau changed its status. The IBE ceased to be a non-governmental organization and, in 1929, became an intergovernmental organization. One of its priority tasks is defined in the preamble to its new statutes, which clearly states its purpose:

Considering that the development of education is an essential factor in the establishment of peace and in the moral and material progress of humanity, that the collection of data on research and application in the field of education and the assurance of extensive interchange of information and data by which each country may be stimulated to benefit from the experiences of others is important to this development. *2

Ten years later, the scourge of war once again devastated the world, bringing destruction and disillusion in its wake. At the end of this conflict, which was made even deadlier than the previous one by scientific advances, the faith in humankind was rekindled in those who sought to build peace through education. The nations decided to hold an `assembly'. It was 1945, in San Francisco, and the United Nations Organization was born. The preamble to its Charter, beginning `We, the peoples of the United Nations', reaffirms its faith in human rights, an ideal which takes its source in the major currents of human thought which have always nourished

Towards the new millennium-an idea gaining ground

the quest for liberty and justice. One year later, the `peacemakers', convinced of the essential role played by education in the achievement and maintenance of peace in the world, founded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization-UNESCO-in London. In 1946, at its first General Conference, UNESCO launched and defended the idea of education for international understanding. The organization's constitution highlights its ethical mission in these terms: `Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed'. In its programmes, UNESCO introduced the foundations of education for international understanding. The ideal took shape more clearly still in 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first part of the future `International Bill of Human Rights', which was to be of moral as well as of legal significance.

In 1953, an experimental project was launched by several countries, UNESCO's Associated Schools Project (ASP). Looked upon as `navigators', the Associated Schools explore new ways and new means of adapting education to the needs of societies.

From 1974 to 1994, towards a culture of peace

Three decades after the appeal for peace beginning `We, the peoples of the United Nations', the great human rights movement added a further stone to its edifice. At the eighteenth session of UNESCO's General Conference, the Member States adopted the `Recommendation concerning education for international understanding, co-operation and peace and education relating to human rights and fundamental free- doms', better known as the `1974 Recommendation'. In 1976, the International Bill of Human Rights brought with it three legal instru- ments of great importance for the States which ratified them: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and the Optional Protocol to the latter Covenant. Unrestricted respect for the rights of the individual was thus instituted as a prerequisite and a sine qua non condition for the achievement and maintenance of peace, both within and between States. Rulers and subjects alike were made aware that it was not sufficient to allude to the ideal of peace or to invoke human rights in order for these to materialize. The awareness took hold that a form of education was needed to establish lasting peace and international understanding. In that spirit, UNESCO convened a meeting of experts in 1977 with the task of studying the constituent elements of peace founded on respect for human rights'. The teaching of human rights became one of the organization's priorities. The first steps were taken in 1978, in Vienna, where the International Congress on Human Rights Education firmly recalled that those rights were indivisible. In 1987, Malta provided the setting for the International Congress on Human

Towards the new millennium-an idea gaining ground

Rights Teaching, Information and Documentation, while in 1989, the International Congress on Peace in the Minds of Men, whose title recalled the principle of UNESCO's ethical mission, was held in Yamoussoukro (Cote d'Ivoire). This congress proposed a new goal, namely the development of a `culture of peace', which would be based on values recognized as universal by all cultures, in order 'successfully to achieve the transition from a culture of war to a culture of peace' (Federico Mayor).

Times changed, and some major events occurred after San Francisco, London, Vienna, Malta and Yamoussoukro. The world was plunged into upheaval. The Berlin Wall fell. Totalitarianism retreated. Geopolitical maps were redrawn. New technologies emerged. At the same time, however, the gap between rich and poor nations widened, poverty spread in the major cities and the specter of war was ever present. Now that world problems are interrelated, concepts can no longer be considered in isolation and there is an urgent need to review the objectives of education, to heed the new aspirations of peoples and to redirect the means of action.

In 1991, UNESCO's General Conference called for the convening of an international commission, whose mandate would be to reflect in depth on the challenges facing education in the twenty-first century and to formulate suggestions for appropriate actions to meet those challenges. In Montreal in 1993, the International Congress on Education for Human

Towards the new millennium-an idea gaining ground

Rights and Democracy devoted a large part of its discussions to human rights and democracy and their relations with education, development, cultural diversity and tolerance. It would express the idea of a 'cultural democracy'.

One of the founders of modern pedagogy, Jan Amos Comenius (1592- 1670), a writer and a humanist, already during his lifetime stressed the importance of universal literacy for the harmonious development of society. He advocated universal education for girls and boys and asserted the principle of equal access to instruction, without distinction as to religion, social class and even ability. Following the fourth centenary of his birth, the Czech authorities and UNESCO created the Comenius Medal in 1993, to reward women and men who achieve distinction in the field of educational research and innovation. The medal is awarded at sessions of the International Conference on Education.

In this same year, confirming the importance it attaches to pedagogic thought, UNESCO published a series on 100 `thinkers on education', which appeared in Prospects, its international review of comparative education, now produced by the IBE (see sources). In the series (taking up four double issues of the review), philosophers, politicians, sociologists, scientists, theologians, novelists, his- torians, poets and essay writers of all times and all cultures are described in monographs. There they are free to hold a dialogue, contradict each other and rebut each other.

Towards the new millennium: a more holistic view

While it cannot be denied that human rights are indivisible and interdependent, the need for a type of education adapted to present- day circumstances, marked as they are by the expression of all forms of intolerance, violence and inequality, compelled UNESCO recently to develop an Integrated Framework of Action on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Democracy.

These concerns lay at the heart of the debates during the forty- fourth session of the International Conference on Education (1994), at which the ministers of education took a substantial step forward by adopting the Integrated Framework of Action. This framework, which is both a legitimate and a logical sequel to the 1974 Recommendation, offers basic guidelines which can be converted, at institutional and national level, into strategies, policies and action plans, taking account of all aspects of culture, such as history, religion and

Towards the new millennium-an idea gaining ground

custom. In the Declaration which they adopted at the forty-fourth session, the delegates expressed Member States' determination to achieve the changeover from the twentieth to the twenty-first century with force and determination in the following terms:

Mindful of our responsibility for the education of citizens committed to the promotion of peace, human rights and democracy in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Charter of the United Nations [San Francisco, 1945], the Constitution of UNESCO [London, 1946], the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1948] and other relevant instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child [1989] and the conventions on the rights of women, and in accordance with the Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding, Co-operation and Peace and Education relating to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, [... ] Convinced that education should promote knowledge, values, attitudes and skills conducive to respect for human rights and to an active commitment to the defense of such rights and to the building of a culture of peace and democracy,

[... ] Consequently, we, the Ministers of Education meeting at the 44th session of the International Conference on Education, adopt this Declaration and invite the Director-General to present to the General Conference a Framework of Action that allows Member States and UNESCO to integrate, within a coherent policy, education for peace, human rights and democracy in the perspective of sustainable development.

Tirelessly pursuing this objective, the UNESCO General Conference, at its twenty-eighth session (November 1995), adopted the Declaration of the ICE's forty-fourth session and the Integrated Framework of Action. Taking account of the Recommendations of the conferences held since 1974, the session paid particular attention to the Culture of Peace programme and called on the Organization's sectors (education, science, culture and communication) to introduce this interdisciplinary approach into their programmes.

THE FUNDAMENTAL CHALLENGES TO ACHIEVING GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

The General Conference of UNESCO, in redefining the foundations of the educational mission, did not hesitate to raise the essential issues which will have to be addressed in order to arrive at last at a truly global citizenship:

* cultivating the values on which the practical implementation of peace, human rights and democracy depend;

* no longer only emphasizing cognitive learning, but also affective and behavioral leading;

* learning citizenship, based on universal values and knowledge to be applied in practice.

UNESCO, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation (1945-95) at its twenty-eighth General Conference, renewed its commitment to its Constitution. That solemn gesture should be seen as a symbol of `beginning again', the belief that nothing is ever achieved for good and that a constant effort of spirit and energy is needed. The relevance of this principle, which is rooted in the myths and beliefs of all countries, should bring together the countless segments of mankind, without diminishing their individuality, in order to achieve the ideal of peace, which is merely waiting to advance across the earth.

For a new philosophy of education

Teaching values for learning to be

While we witness the triumph of science and technology, some effects of which tend to reify humanity, we have come to a turning point between two centuries, when our thoughts must find inspiration in the ethical principles underlying the world's philosophies: `There is, therefore, every reason to place renewed emphasis on the moral and cultural dimensions of education' (Learning: the treasure within, UNESCO, 1996). As he introduced the debate at the ICE's forty-fourth session on the theme `Education for the twenty-first century', Jacques Delors-more than twenty years on recalled the influence of the report of the Commission chaired by Edgar Faure in 1972, Learning to be. At that time, the report focused on the diversity of educational situations in the world. Faced with the problem of conducting an overall analysis and putting forward recommendations acceptable to all at the political and philosophical levels, Delors refers to the principal changes that have taken place in the world since Learning to be was written, such as the nature and new forms of relations between North and South, the emergence of `several South', and the growing importance of information: anything that takes place in one place [for better or for worse and in all areas] cannot be ignored by the remainder of humanity. The changes which have occurred in the major political blocs, whose prevailing ideologies infiltrated the whole world for several decades, have resulted in a `major ideological vacuum'. Jacques Delors offered participants his vision of a new philosophy of education through what he referred to as his double faith: my faith in education as a factor of improvement, to varying degrees, in interpersonal relations, relationships within societies, relationships between nations; and my second [...] faith in the role of international organizations