EDUCATION: The Challenge of Humanising Education

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María Cecilia Espinosa

SANTIAGO, Mar 17 2005 (IPS) - From the Chilean capital, the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) launched a call to the world’s governments and civil society to emphasise the humanistic side of education and culture through concrete policies that reach directly into the classroom.

This is the underlying vision behind “The Meanings of Education and Culture: Cultivating Humanity”, an international event that kicked off in Santiago on Wednesday with a public forum, followed by a two-day workshop for specialists, Thursday and Friday, in Valparaíso, 120 kilometres west of the Chilean capital.

The event was organised by the UNESCO Regional Bureau of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC) and the National Council of Art and Culture of Chile’s Education Ministry, with support from the French Embassy and the cooperation of the University of Chile.

The speakers at the opening session in Santiago included former French education minister Luc Ferry, Portuguese philosopher and academic Roberto Carneiro, Spanish philosopher and writer Fernando Savater, who participated by videoconference from Madrid, and Chilean National Science Prize laureate Humberto Maturana.

At the follow-up workshop in Valparaíso, the main themes were the generation, distribution and use of knowledge in a globalised world and the challenges faced by education in terms of participation, diversity, equity and social development.

One of the main challenges in education today, the participants noted, is finding a balance between the concept of “citizens of the world”, with a global language and international cultural heritage, and that of “local citizens” with a language and cultural heritage of their own.

Brazilian children’s writer Ana María Machado commented to IPS that globalisation brings the people of different nations closer together, but that its major disadvantage is “the hegemony of a few cultures that tend to overshadow the others, which is why a balance must be struck to promote a genuine exchange, as opposed to the passive consumption of what comes from the large powers.”

Within the range of diverse policies adopted by the countries of Latin America to strengthen local cultures, “there is a growing awareness of the importance of creatively taking advantage of the opportunities offered by globalisation,” she added.

OREALC director Maria Luiza Machado, also from Brazil, stressed that it is no longer sufficient to provide children and youth with basic skills. In addition, they should be taught to exercise independence and to work for democracy and peace, she said.

This is why it is crucial to expand the teaching arena to encompass ethics, philosophy, the arts and “life itself”, with the basic goal of putting education at the service of human relations, she said.

For his part, Luc Ferry, formerly the minister of education in France (2002-2004), spoke to IPS of the need for “deep reflection on the issues of social justice, education, equality and equity, as well as women’s work, community and religion.”

Chilean Culture and Arts Minister José Weinstein called for an end to the “self-absorption” he believes to be typical of education today. “We do not want a school system focused in on itself, but rather, one that looks out towards society and humanity in all its dimensions, and builds bridges with all sectors.”

Art, he said, “is essential for schools to cultivate humanity and a shared identity, because artists write, paint or sing about their own reality,” he said.

The gap separating the world of art and the average citizen today was clearly illustrated by a survey conducted by the Ministry of Culture, which revealed that only 40 percent of Santiago residents had read a book in 2004.

And among the adults from the lowest socio-economic bracket, a mere six percent had been to a movie theatre during the same year.

Alvaro Marchesi, a professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, La Laguna and Salamanca, proposed a strategy to humanise education that includes placing greater value on the work of teachers, fighting school segregation, and above all, adopting a “narrative” style of schooling with an hour set aside for reading every day.

Ana María Machado stressed that literature is a means of preserving memory and wisdom. “Reading the stories of others broadens our experience, provides us with insight into different ways of life, and helps us to recognise and overcome obstacles and difficulties,” she said.

As such, she hopes that UNESCO’s proposal “is translated into concrete policies, because the solution to the impasse currently facing education in the world today is the cultivation of humanity and the integration of all aspects of culture, especially literature.”

Araceli de Tezanos, a researcher at the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Antioquia, Colombia, lamented the demise of the leadership once shown by UNESCO in the educational sphere.

At one time, she told IPS, the U.N. agency “had succeeded in creating a process for the codification of concepts used in schools and in the training of teachers that allowed for an enriching exchange between different social and cultural backgrounds.”

Based on her own experience as a primary school teacher in Uruguay and a university professor in Chile and Colombia, de Tezanos maintained that “you cannot educate without realising that these boys and girls are human beings, with different ways of thinking and seeing the world, but that school integrates them into a much wider cultural conception.”

De Tezanos advocated a return to the educational guidelines established by UNESCO in the 1950s and 1960s, with “educational experiments like the one-room rural schools system or the science teaching programmes that were cut because of a lack of government funding.”

In Marchesi’s view, UNESCO’s proposal is wide-reaching, and “governments and ministries should translate it into concrete policies and programmes that can be implemented by teachers and would serve to transform students, with all parties assuming their particular tasks and responsibilities.”

The danger now, he added, is that this initiative will not move beyond the realm of theoretical discussion, far from the millions of teachers, students and parents who could benefit.

“While society steers students towards competition, selfishness and segregation, we should fight back by promoting integration, solidarity and human values,” he said.

“This is a permanent contradiction that we have to face, but as society changes, education will change as well, and vice versa,” he concluded.