RIGHTS-EDUCATION: Learning and Teaching Solidarity

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Katalin Karcagi

BUDAPEST, Jun 7 1999 (IPS) - Values and policies of solidarity are to benefit not only developing nations of the South but also Europe, where dangerous tendencies to “close doors and turn inwards” are unfolding, a Council-of-Europe seminar held in Budapest concluded this weekend.

The seminar – Linking and Learning for Global Change – was aimed at defining changes in educational concepts required in the so-called age of globalisation, which should not mean poverty and marginalisation for millions, the organisers said.

The Global Solidarity Campaign was launched a year ago at the World Expo, in Lisbon. The idea was to mobilise public support and political will throughout Europe in favour of the values and policies of solidarity.

“The feeling is that Europe too often forgets that it is part of a wider world. Europe has become what it is due to its openness and its cultural exchanges with other continents. It would be very detrimental to Europe to close its doors and to turn inwards,” Mikko Lohikoski, executive secretary of the campaign told IPS.

“It is absolutely necessary that people understand that the question of refugees or the question of the 1,3 billion people who don’t have decent food or water or shelter is a gross denial of human rights”, he points out.

The campaign, which is to last until mid-2000 is carried out by the Council of Europe, a pan-European organisation with 41 member states.

The Council’s campaign intends to bring together individuals, non governmental organisations, governments, media, the private sector and others, in a common reflection and action on the issues of poverty and social exclusion.

Emphasis is put on the campaign theme that globalisation should have human rights at its core, to create social cohesion worldwide, instead of more inequalities.

Says Mikko Lohikoski: “In the past few years there has been a weakening of solidarity in our societies. Not only vis-a-vis the South – African, Asian and Latin American countries, as expressed for example in funding for development cooperation – but also in our own societies. Neoliberal values have become stronger, while weaker members of society have been left on their own”.

“In the age of globalisation when we are more interlinked to each other as ever before, it is particularly important to share experiences on issues such as development, environment, jobs or crime,” he added.

Education is a crucial field in shaping attitudes and values and in raising a responsible generation, global citizens, participants agreed.

Some 80 participants from 30 countries of Europe, Asia and Africa looked into the changes imposed by globalisation in educational systems. Case studies from Europe, in particular the Netherlands , Ireland and Austria, were presented.

“We drew the conclusion that it is important not to limit the initiative to a few countries,” Jos Lemmers, executive director of the Lisbon-based North-South Centre, told IPS.

“In all of the (Council of Europe’s) 41 countries, governments, in cooperation with NGOs, should create the conditions for young people to grow up with a better understanding of world society and their place in it, of the responsibilities and opportunities of globalisation”, he added.

The meeting stressed that global education as a formal part of schools’ curricula, has been implemented in only a small group of countries. Another few have taken the issue into their programmes, but usually as part of larger subjects such as Education for Citizenship.

“Very often (such inclusion) is the work of individual teachers. Unfortunately there is no consistent teachers’ training in this area. Teachers have to be taught to deal with these issues in a classroom situation. It is a dimension of the education process to be taken into account in all subjects and which requires also innovation in curricula,” Lemmers said.

He mentioned five different dimensions:

– economic development or development education; – environmental awareness or need for sustainable development; – the human scale of the development process: human rights and protection of human rights; – the importance of peace and conflict prevention, and – intercultural understanding, tolerance between people with different ethnic, cultural or religious identities.

Lemmers thinks that long-standing development-aid donor countries are generally more open to do implement development education, than the former socialist states of central and eastern Europe.

The seminar’s second task was to prepare the Europe-wide School Week which will take place from on November 15 through 19, involving schools in all 41 member countries in an Internet-based project of linking and learning for global change.

A web site linked to the North-South Centre will act as the coordination post for the School Week. Projects and initiatives are to be posted on the site, and its implementation can be carried out and followed by all participants both within and outside Europe.

In the seminar it was also agreed that participants would make an effort to link with the schools in Kosovo and Serbia to help them to get integrated into international community and to overcome the traumatic experience of the war.

The seminar also gave a ‘Worldaware Award’ to five winners of an international contest on global learning projects. The award was attributed for the first time, by the North-South Centre and the Dutch Committee for International Cooperation and Sustainable Development.

ß One of the winners is a CD-ROM which can be used in the schools to sho w young people in the North how life is like in countries such as Brazil, Senegal or Indonesia. Another is a web page on technology for the environment.