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?