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Mercy Global Concern - 2003
Education for Interdependence
Briefing paper Number 2: October 2003
At the recent DPI/NGO Conference held in
New York, MGC facilitated the workshop
"Education for Interdependence"
Education for interdependence is an invitation
to citizens from around the globe to seek or create democracy
by engaging in civic acts. When Vaclav Havel, President of the
Czech Republic, accepted the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia on
July 4th, 1994 he recalled the words of the revered first president
of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk, who observed, "Democracy
is a discussion." Havel explained, "It
is always a matter of agreement and consensus; which means compromise,
and mobilizing instincts to determine what kind of compromise
is acceptable and what kind is not."
Democracy is about human dignity, about making
the most of our unique human capacity for dreaming and doing,
and about understanding the inextricable link between our own
well- being and that of the common good.
Education for Interdependence is not about utopia, but about
the hope that women and men can live freely as individuals in
a world that holds the promise of liberty and freedom for all.
The image which best captures what education for interdependence
is about is the of the "Kapia on the Bridge" by
Elizabeth Matynia.
1 The Kapia on the Bridge - Images of a Civil World.
Vol. 13/2 (Issue 44) -June 2003 Central and Eastern Europe
Bulletin The Kapia on the Bridge
In the past, in times of crisis like ours
now, people have sometimes conjured up hopeful images that
expressed possible solutions to their situations. Such imagery
is usually created and explored more by artists than by politicians.
Poetry has the capacity to find this kind of image, as does
dance, as they both capture an otherwise inexpressible combination
of historical and visual experience, of time and space, of
insight and emotion, within their forms.
I have one of these hopeful images of a
civil society before my eyes. It comes, paradoxically,
from a novel that takes place not far from Sarajevo, in what
has
sometimes seemed a hopeless region of ethnic conflict and
war. The image comes from Ivo Andric's The Bridge on
the Drina. It is not precisely the bridge itself I am thinking
of, however, but something in the middle of
that bridge, called the kapia.
The image of a bridge, and the task of "bridging," have
frequently been evoked in recent discussions on social capital,
networking, and the need to bring people together in an increasingly
divided world. But the bridge in Andric's book is a very
special one. It is special not so much because it is picturesque,
but because it widens in the middle, to allow for something
more than just crossing the river. The bridge's significance
lies in this extra space, called the kapia, with its
terraces or "sofas" on either side, which
throughout the centuries the novel spans, accommodates conversations,
get-togethers, and the savoring of Turkish coffee by those
who frequently use the bridge. Muslims Bosnians and Turks,
Orthodox Christian Serbs, and later on also Catholic Croats
and Jews all sit together on the kapia. The Kapia is such a
place where those who would otherwise not meet can look at
each other, sit together, and get to know each other. With
its "sofas" on both sides, a stand with
a brass coffee maker, and a constant flow of people from different
cultures, the kapia makes it possible for people to look "through
one another's eyes," and to plant the seeds
of trust.
We do have a kapia of our own, a richly
textured space made up of layers and layers of diverse
but always civic minded initiatives and organizations and inhabited
by individuals working in their local communities, or constituting
imagined communities that transcend national and cultural
borders.
We find our kapias Cracow and in Cape Town, in Belfast
and in Jerusalem - as well as through the new Interdependence
Project.
The CivWorld Citizens' Campaign begins with
the premise that people-citizens of their own communities, their
nations and the world can and must be the driving force and the
principle agents of change for a more democratic world.
Citizenship takes on a new meaning in this period of transition.
We are in a different world since the collapse of communism,
the end of the Cold war, the globalization of commerce and the
terrorist attacks which have sadly a common part of modern life.
The world is rife with challenges and opportunities. Just as there are more
democracies than ever before in human history, and more advances in communications
and information technology than could ever have been imagined, there is also
violent reactions against the very modernity of the new era. Fundamentalism
has reared its head, and non-state random violence has, in a sense, replaced
conventional warfare as a method of combat. The result has been anxiety and
fear, which can lead to xenophobia, unilateralism and even a willingness to
give up most precious freedoms.
The Interdependence project is an attempt to renew and advance
democracy and international understanding. The project is in
three parts and includes:
- The Declaration of Interdependence;
- The launch of the first ever Interdependence Day;
- The development of an interdependence curriculum.
More information on the project can be obtained by going to...
www.democracycollaborative.org
Deirdre Mullan RSM
Director
Mercy Global Concern
Representing the Sisters of Mercy at the UN
After the workshop, and at the plenary session the subject of "Education
for a Secure Future" was addressed. Cream Wright,
Education Service, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said
the global community had focused too much upon economic growth
when talking about development. Although that was critical,
development was also about people, their life choices, their
quality of life, and dhow they survived and prospered within
communities. Increasingly, education was treated as a means
of helping people to address a wide range of social, political,
cultural and economic problems in society. These included tensions
generated by various forms of intolerance and discrimination,
as well as the complex demands of globalization and the new
threats posed by pandemics such as HIV/AIDS.
That approach could help to secure that education led to a
sustainable development process through which a secure environment
could be built for the world's children. Education, he
stressed, must empower individuals and communities if it was
to contribute to development.
Anuradha Chenoy, Professor, center for Russian, Central
Asian and European Studies, School of International Studies
at Jahawarlal Nehru University, India said that nationalism
was constructed in schools, which remained capable of conveying
images, messages and representations reflecting the dominant 'nationalistic' culture.
In most cultures, history was often equated with power, conquest
and expansionism, while history's heroes were often linked
with military victories. Attempts to correct such images involved
adding accounts of those heroic women who broke the 'normal' nurture
and mothering roles with military victories that brought national
glory.
Noting that concepts of 'heritage,' 'national
history' and 'world history' often excluded
or minimized the history of marginalized or women's voices,
she said they constructed the past in a manner that suited the
present. Teaching in conflict areas where there was an identifiable 'other' tended
to inculcate, when leaderships in liberal democratic States used
terms like 'us' and 'them', 'good
and evil', or 'civilized and barbaric', such
neat binaries and categories were then repeated in thousands
of languages by globalized media.
Educators and activists must recognize the special needs of
women, she said. Even if gender was not history, it was insecurity
because violence against women continued to be tolerated. They
continue to need protection, which makes them unequal citizens.
In many current conflicts, women remain excluded from the entire
political discourse. Discussions were required to promote gender
equality in school curricula. Surveys, probes and public hearings
were needed to deepen public education and make it a popular
movement, she concluded.
Olivia Martin, Network Integrator of the Brazil Office,
Global Youth Action Network, said that peace education
was more than just teaching conflict resolution. It involved
addressing the root causes of violence. Furthermore, peace
education was not a new subject to be squeezed into already
overcrowded curriculum. It was a learning approach that could
be integrated into relevant existing subject matter. In a mathematics
class, for example, children could learn that a single nuclear
submarine cost the equivalent of the total education spending
in 23 low-income countries.
It is also important to note the less visible voices in the
peace education process. She believed that young people could
be key agents in the promotion of peace education because they
had the courage to dream and to visualize the kind of world they
would like to inhabit. They also had the enthusiasm to work to
create that reality. Other key agents to consider in the promotion
of peace education were indigenous peoples, she continued. There
was a need for western civilization to drop its imperialistic
pretensions on universality and recognize other cultures and
value systems that had lived in harmony with the environment
for centuries. Humanity and flexibility were necessary to establish
a relationship of true cooperation and exchange, and peace education
should reflect indigenous knowledge and value systems.
Margaret Dabor, Commissioner, National Commission for Democracy
and Human Rights, Sierra Leone, her country's Government
had started positive discrimination in favour of girls as an
attempt to address the regional and gender disparities in the
provision of an education service. In addition, UNICEF and
international NGOs had been carrying out non-formal
primary education programmes since 1992 with the aim of delivering
primary education to those children who could not attend school.
Challenges to ensuring a secure future included the lack of
political will and the mobilization of resources, she noted.
Making education free was a laudable goal, but what about the
availability of quality teachers? While efforts were being made
to reduce the number of untrained and unqualified teachers with
the introduction of distance learning courses, curriculum innovations
lived or died depending on teachers.
Elton Skendaj, Peace and Disarmament Education to Disarm
Children and Youth, Albania, said his country, one of
the poorest in Europe, had been awash in illegal weapons following
civil unrest in 1997. Following a successful physical disarmament
project conducted by the United Nations and the Government,
a project formed by the United Nations Department of Disarmament
Affairs and The Hague appeal for Peace was carrying out a mental
disarmament project.
He said the project used a participatory approach, which differed
from top down development projects that treated local communities
as passive beneficiaries.
Instead, it promoted the view that people became active agents of change in
their local communities. The community helped in the design and implementation
of the project, and the international team provided guidance for the working
group as well as expertise and financial assistance.
Regarding the challenges, he said, that the current education
system was based on the domination and strict hierarchies that
were legacies of Albania's communist past. In addition,
widespread economic poverty meant that many teachers were more
focused on how to sustain their families than on their poorly
paid teaching.
Deirdre Mullan RSM
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