EDUCATION: UNESCO’s New Approach Focuses on Tolerance

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Sep 6 2001 (IPS) - The objective of education worldwide, which until the last decade focused on universal access to schooling, is now heading towards a concept of teaching for learning to live together, says the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in a document distributed Wednesday to Education ministers from around the world.

In the 20th century, the campaigns for universal education proved successful in that, by 1997, 84 percent of the world’s children attended school regularly. Furthermore, state spending on education grew from 0.8-0.9 percent of the world’s combined gross domestic product (GDP) in 1990, to 1.3-2.3 percent in 1998.

In contrast, observed Cecilia Braslavsky, director of the International Bureau of Education (IBE), a division of UNESCO, the last century saw 180 million people killed in armed conflicts and wars.

History underscores the difficulties humans have had in achieving harmony and maintaining it over time, says the document received by the ministers gathered in Geneva for the International Conference on Education.

Though social tensions and violence cannot be exclusively attributed to problems in education, learning plays a key role in overcoming them, says the text.

With this in mind, ministers and delegates from 180 countries this week are debating a concept of education for living together peacefully.

The idea of education for fomenting peaceful coexistence is based on the fact that intolerance and social rejection are often the product of fear, which feed on ignorance, and of injustices in access to human rights and development, according to this new approach.

For UNESCO, the “Education for All” programme is still the priority, stressed the agency’s assistant director-general for education, John Daniel, given that there are still 100 million children around the world who are not attending school.

But what is particularly troubling, said the British-born official, is that 70 percent of these children live in countries where armed conflicts are occurring, or that are in the process of emerging from war.

Because of this, in order to meet the challenge set by UNESCO to achieve “Education for All” by 2015 it is essential to resolve the matter of conflicts through a programme of “education for living together,” said Daniel.

The objective for 2015 is not only a quantitative goal, pointed out UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura during the inauguration Wednesday of the International Conference on Education, which ends Friday.

Schools should teach children to take part in modern life and live together peacefully, he said.

Conflicts and violence, even in the classroom, affect rich and poor countries alike, despite the vast differences in resources they possess, pointed out Martine Brunschwig Graf, representing the Swiss government.

Violence reflects the structure of society, its standard of living and the role of the parents, teachers and civil society, said Brunschwig.

For her part, IBE director Braslavsky commented that UNESCO is facing the same problems on the education matter that are weighing on the World Conference against Racism, underway in Durban, South Africa, in that both involve “learning to live together within the diversity of cultures.”

Braslavsky went on to propose developing education as a sort of “counter-culture” approach to fighting exclusion, marginalisation, inequality and the use of violence.

At the three-day conference here, in numerous plenary sessions and workshops, ministers and delegates are hammering out “best practices” for applying the concept of education for learning to live together.