The challenge of education for
all
By Muriel Denis, journalist FRANCE
Too many children around the world are still
deprived of schooling, and the international community is keen to help those developing
countries that are pursuing a clear educational strategy.
Some gloomy statistics: today, nearly 1
billion adults are illiterate and 100 million children, 60 % of them girls, of primary
school age have no access to schooling. One in four children does not complete the
five-year course of basic education vital to acquiring minimum skills in literacy and
numeracy. Africa is particularly badly affected, and if current trends continue, 75% of
the children without access to schooling in 2015 will be on that continent.
The reasons for this human tragedy are
manifold. They include the need for the children in many countries to help, for instance,
with farming or domestic work – it is estimated that nearly 250 million boys and
girls aged five to fourteen are working – cultural factors (sex discrimination),
extreme family poverty and the disastrous consequences of the AIDS pandemic, which has
caused the death of a great many teachers; and the digital gap that today separates the
countries of the North from those of the South cannot but contribute to making these
inequalities of development worse.
Conscious of the significance of the impact
of education on health, growth, reducing inequality and promoting democracy and peace, the
international community does not intend to stand idly by. Ten years after the World
Conference on Education for All (in Jomtien, Thailand), a further meeting was held, in
April 2000, in Dakar, in Senegal. The 1,100 participants set themselves two major
objectives: to work to ensure, first, between now and 2015, that all children have access
to good quality compulsory and free primary education and that they follow it to
completion; second, to eliminate, between now and 2005, the disparities between the sexes
in primary and secondary education. They also made a solemn commitment to ensure
"that no country that has made a serious commitment to promote education for all
should see its efforts thwarted by a lack of resources".
The challenge is a big one since it is
estimated today that almost 90 countries will still not be in a position to offer their
children universal access to basic education by 2015.
Since Dakar, the leaders of the eight most
industrialised nations (G8) have ratified these objectives, first in Genoa in July 2001,
then in Kananaskis (Canada) in June 2002. At their most recent meeting, they adopted a
series of measures aimed at helping developing countries gain access to universal primary
education. They notably validated the "accelerated initiative" of education for
all, a programme being run under the auspices of the World Bank, set up to provide
financial aid to countries that pursue clear policies to promote basic education. The
majority of the countries in the Priority Solidarity Zone (PSZ)* are empowered to take
part in this project. The donors held a first meeting on 27 November 2002 in Brussels
(Belgium), with the intention of contributing their support to an initial list of seven
countries. This is just the start.
Presiding over the G8 this year, French
president Jacques Chirac attaches the greatest importance to ensuring that the
international community translate its promises into action, as France has done. Indeed,
France devotes 20% of its public development aid to the education sector and in this area
has placed itself in the forefront of the donor countries. One of the major lines of
action consists of developing the role of new technologies, particularly in the area of
distance teacher training, in order to prevent the education gap becoming even greater.
Text courtesy: Embassy of France in
Kathmandu.
Opening Up Our View of the
World
Power and powerlessness in the age of
globalization. Brigitte Neumann talks with sociologist Ulrich Beck
Ulrich Beck teaches as professor of sociology
at Munich University and is one of the world’s most renowned social scientists. He
became known outside specialist circles as a result of his book "Risk Society:
Towards a New Modernity." Ulrich Beck has been focusing on the subject of
globalization for many years.
When it comes to the subject of
globalization, you are considered the "first expert" on this trend, someone who
is viewed very critically in Germany not only by people on the left, but also by
conservatives. To what extent are we already living in a globalized world here in Germany?
You could say that we are living in an
internally globalized country. In many respects, globalization is frequently understood to
be something that takes place "outside," that is considered an additional
dimension to be taken into account. The question I find interesting, however, is: how far
are we globalizing ourselves internally? In Germany, one in six weddings now lead to
binational marriages. And more and more babies are not living under homogeneous parenthood
conditions, but have binational parents. These are indicators of the fact that we now have
world cultures present in our own house. That means we are already globalized or live in a
transnational way to a much greater extent than we admit in public discussion.
Accordingly, globalization is not only something that will concern and threaten us in the
future, but something that is taking place in the present and to which we must first open
our eyes. We must become accustomed to the idea that the reality we are dealing with is a
transnational or a cosmopolitan reality, in which cultures are recombining and in which
the boundaries we still assume to exist have already been at least partially swept away.
Globality means that everyday life is permeated by the perception of global problems. In
their daily lives, people can see they are affected by questions that do not only relate
to one location, but affect civilization as a whole. We do not yet have the solutions to
these questions, but the awareness that we live in an endangered world is present in more
and more life situations.
We understand a globalized world to
mean an economically globalized world or a politically globalized world. However, one
suspicion comes to the fore – especially in this time of war against terror –
namely, the suspicion that the word "globalization" might just be a more
agreeable way of denoting the global supremacy of the superpower United States. What do
you get when you think the idea of globalization through to its logical conclusion?
Don’t you end up with the domination of the world by the most powerful?
No. Global conditions are far too complex to
be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power. We are dealing
with an overcomplex and thoroughly contingent world – contingent in the sense that we
make decisions that have consequences which no one can know in advance. In the final
analysis, terror is also another proof of the fact that the superpower is not really a
superpower. It was vulnerable. This experience actually means the very opposite: the
largest military power was unable to stop such a sensitive attack and will be unable to
rule out such a possibility in the future. Precisely this is the background to the United
States’ military interventions. And the terror itself is an example of the
world’s uncontrollability. The idea that we can filter out and exclude the terrorists
by upgrading our equipment, installing radar screens, implementing total controls –
not only at airports, but eventually also in supermarkets and in all institutions –
is an example of how an ideal vision of control probably achieves the very opposite.
Although implementing such measures will undermine – and possibly even stifle –
our liberties, these measures will not lead to the security we seek to achieve. The world
has become so complex that the idea of a power in which everything comes together and can
be controlled in a centralized way is now erroneous.
Would you say that the attacks of
September 11th have promoted this cosmopolitan view? Don’t we now all devote a little
more attention to the wider world than we did in the past?
This is partly so, and partly not. Initially,
the horrific images of September 11th triggered an enormous wave of solidarity. In foreign
policy terms, the world began to move. And for a while it was said that the military
option was just one among many. You have to seek dialogue, you have to seek agreement.
Western countries in particular can today no longer be separated from Muslim societies,
because they have them within themselves. They are themselves internally globalized. And
therefore we must seek dialogue in this networked world. We must ask which voice was
actually attempting to make itself heard and saw no other possibility of gaining a
hearing. To that extent, for a while this also represented a forced opening of a
cosmopolitan view. But it then very soon became clear that the response of a war against
terrorism, initially conceived of in a metaphorical sense, began to be taken increasingly
seriously and came to entail waging a real war. However, at the beginning, it did not
involve a war in the usual sense at all. You cannot make peace with terrorists. The normal
dividing lines between war and peace do not apply. At the same time there were no
identifiable opponents in uniform. They were to be found everywhere. Precisely this is
what globalization implies: this network-like web of terrorism. That was what was so
frightening. In the first instance, therefore, global terrorism created a kind of global
community sharing a common fate, something we had previously considered impossible. But
this represented a "moment of decision," an occasion to take decisions that
could be applied in very diverse ways. Incidently, I regret the fact that the European
position, which can indeed be summed up in the maxim "make law, not war," was
not more clearly expressed, also in geopolitical terms.
However, you yourself have also
experienced how difficult it can be to achieve understanding between cultures. I’m
referring to the time, before September 11th, when you opened an international conference
on cosmopolitanism in Helsinki.
That was the first major social sciences
conference at which social scientists from all cultures wanted to reach a consensus on
whether we can continue to pursue a national course in the social sciences or whether we
need a cosmopolitan path that also connects us in a new way. I was therefore totally
surprised at the controversy it provoked and the dramatic opposition I met with from
intellectuals from South America, the Arab countries, and other regions of the South. In
the course of our debate it became clear that these researchers based their arguments on
two experiences. The first is that all our talk of globalization and open borders does not
apply to them. When they come to Europe, they are confronted by still closed borders.
Thus, the concept of open borders is a very selective concept, one that is not taken
seriously at all in the experience of non-Europeans. And the second thing is that they see
themselves as the losers of globalization. They see themselves as those who are forced to
bear all the risks of globalization. For example, European countries have still not yet
really opened up their borders to products from these countries, something that is
fundamental. Therefore, double standards prevail. And then there was a third point that
demonstrated that these scholars no longer wish to submit to new interpretations from the
centre. In their view, cosmopolitanism seems to be a renewed attempt by western
imperialism, which now ingeniously promotes the idea of difference but ultimately only
represents a variation of what they have always experienced in the past, namely that the
latest ideas of the modern era are developed in European centres while they are the ones
who have to implement them. And it also became clear that these conditions of inequality
and historical injustice have given rise to a feeling of hate in the world – a deeply
felt hate that cannot easily be overcome with a few good words.
What do you need to cope with
globalization?
You need education. You need subsistence
protection. We need jobs and social security. These are preconditions under which it will
perhaps be possible to deal with these complex circumstances. If they are also under
threat, however, things become difficult. That was the experience in the 20th century
when, for example, the great depression of the 1930s cut the ground from under
people’s feet. I believe that we are once again facing a development of this kind and
are unable to say with any precision when people can continue to cope with this complexity
and contingency. It is not the case that they are returning to the old certainties and
that renationalization or reethnicization will become responses to the challenge of
globalization. Another political alternative would be the recognition of the true value of
international cooperation. Relinquishing apparent national sovereignty does not have to
entail a loss of national sovereignty, but can actually be a benefit. Environmental
problems, unemployment – all these issues cannot be resolved alone. They require at
least European, possibly even broader, solutions. The idea that you surrender your
identity when you relinquish national powers is unhelpful. No, indeed, precisely the
opposite is the case: if done in an intelligent way, you attain the sovereignty to better
solve national problems in cooperation with others.
A diversity of cultures, an element
of provinciality, is what characterizes the identity of Europe. What will happen if this
diversity disappears as a result of the globalization process? For example, it is easier
to eat Arabic, Asian or even fast food in Paris than French cuisine. Does it matter if
Europe’s diversity fades away under the dictate of globalization?
Let me give you an example. I love retsina, a
resin-flavoured wine from Greece. It’s a wine, however, that doesn’t meet
European standards precisely because of the resins it contains. The resin content has to
be reduced so that it can be sold and therefore consumed on the European market. This is a
terrible development. "Save retsina!" should be our reply to Europe. Save
diversity, save difference! Save the niche we have, provinciality! That is what makes
Europe. That is also the foundation of a cosmopolitan Europe. Nonetheless, we continue to
be obsessed with finding or inventing a European nation which, as in the nation state,
guarantees homogeneity and thus an appropriate form of democracy and centralized
government. I believe that this is not only wrong, not only impossible, but that it is
also undesirable. Europe itself is an embodiment of this diversity. Nevertheless, there
are strong tendencies to achieve homogeneity – not only in the political realm, but
also on the market: it now doesn’t matter whether you go shopping in Paris, Munich or
London, you’ll always find the same shops and the same products. Strong ties with a
particular place, the fact that something flourishes there and has a special smell or
taste – all this is being lost. I believe that represents a danger. We are at a
crossroads. That’s why it’s important to revive the tradition of
cosmopolitanism.
(Courtesy: Deutschland Magazine,
germany) |
