Topic: Developed and Developing World: Potential of Education and Science

Afternoon Session, Oct. 16

Hazel Henderson
The question we have been posed is ‘The developed and developing world, the potential of education and science’. Just to set the stage for our two keynote presentations this afternoon, let me summarise what seemed to come out this morning was that there was agreement that we are in the second age of globalisation. Also that the globalisation of the market place needs to be regulated and that we do have the means to regulate it, that we need to extend international law in order to do that. The two keynote speakers are His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan and Dr. Hans van Ginkel, the rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo. I would also like to throw out a couple of questions of my own.

The first relates to the rate of scientific discovery and technological change and human population growth, and increased human interactivity. What kind of new responses do they need in social policy, in education and the redirection of science and technology, as well as the redefinition of development itself? Has our anthropocentric viewpoint, which still underlies science, education and politics, become obsolete? Is it becoming a danger to planetary eco-systems and ourselves? How do we integrate our spiritual lives and values into secular policies, economic activities, science and technology? Because I think only in that way can we close the gaps between the rich and the poor and the information rich and the information poor. I give the floor to His Royal Highness.

El Hassan bin Talal
I am not quite clear on how to comment on Hazel Henderson’s last remarks about the anthropocentric approach to education, except to suggest that my approach is anthropolitical-in the sense of politics where people matter. And, more significantly, policies where people matter. In this world of rapid communication, of globalisation, that earlier speakers have already described, and in the spirit of the remarks this morning of our host, President Havel, and his call for a moment’s silence, I find myself regretfully informing you that I have just received a telephone communication saying that the ‘on-going’ meeting in Egypt actually did not go beyond ten minutes before breaking up. We can only hope that this development will lead to further thought about the past, the present and the future and an initiative aimed at addressing the concerns of all three.

Quite recently, I was rather moved to receive an e-message from a traditional cleric in Jerusalem. Dear friends, colleagues and partners, it said, once again Jesus weeps over Jerusalem as its peace is shattered. And once again my heart cries out for all those grieving families who are nursing the excruciating pain of sudden loss. My heart cries out equally at all of the palpable suffering that is taking place, the traumas carelessly inflicted and the festering bitterness reborn in the hearts of all those who aspire for a just peace. All blood is red, whether Palestinian or Israeli. And the blood that has been wasted in so many parts of Gaza, the West Bank, the Galilee and Jerusalem is God-given, God-created and sacred.

My friend goes on to suggest that, as we speak of sharing knowledge and changing attitudes through education, we should consider the nature of the change in mentality that is badly needed by both. Institutionalised discrimination, the violence of the powerful and their great arrogance are as bad as religious unease, corrupt nepotism or mob violence can ever be. Two wrongs do not make one right. It is as important that all sorts of insidious discrimination stop as it is important that all sorts of violence stop.

You may ask me what has this to do with the topic of education and science between the developing and the developed (countries). I must confess that I was somewhat confused by the strong emphasis on education here, as I was originally invited to speak on culture and spiritual values as well. Indeed, I would like to suggest that even before we speak of globalisation we should speak of sharing and universal values. In my language (Arabic) at least, the word ‘globalisation’ means intervention-which implies material globalisation.

Universalisation is acceptable because it is a part of our creed-and I include myself here by virtue of my role as Chairman of the Policy Advisory Commission of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). We had a small success the other day, when I presented a report that emphasised the importance of traditional knowledge, introducing it into the work of the WIPO. My Indian, Chinese and Latin-American colleagues were asking, alongside our African interlocutors, ”What is in it for us?” You may ask the same question if you have no real knowledge of the horrors that are taking place in our world today. One of our numbers mentioned that it took two world wars and two hundred million people killed before the West stumbled upon the concept of globalisation. Do we have to witness the same bloodshed elsewhere before we awaken to the importance of moving from a culture of survival, of mere existence, towards a culture of participation and exchange?

In the Middle East, strenuous efforts must be deployed to combat the chronic frustration and deadly despair that are felt by Palestinians after years of endless, bruising negotiations. Most human beings tend to react to significant events on a visceral level and that is what I am doing here today. But Palestinians are also human beings and their future looks pretty grim and uninspiring; hence, perhaps, the reaction. Hatred-and let me remind you of the importance of a field of study, the anthropology of suffering-is a malignancy that has once again crept into the fabric of relations in our broader Middle East/West Asia region. We cannot easily define this region. I come from Asia, my Moroccan colleague comes from Africa and, according to the United Nations, Israel is part of no region. Thus, while some of you may refer to us as living in the Middle East, perhaps our friends from Japan would describe us as inhabitants of the Middle West. But, in reality, ours is a region secluded from the world by what you might call a cordon sanitaire. I would term it a cordon insanitaire. The quality of hatred that I felt in Vukovar and Srebrenica, this quality of hatred has now come to visit us.

It seems almost irrelevant to try to participate in a rational discussion over the future of the troposphere of human achievement, globalisation. I could detect so much hatred this week-as much in the eyes of Israeli soldiers and police as in the eyes of stone-throwers or tire-burners. Such blinkered hatred blinds us to the humanity of the other and dwarfs us in the eyes of God and humankind alike. I ask you: What has happened to forgiveness? What has happened to our persistent call for crisis avoidance? What has happened to good faith and to good will?

We tried to make some progress in terms of knowledge and-if I can turn to the latter part of my task here today-we even started some years ago, in conjunction with Harvard University, to develop an overview of Jerusalem, a database constructed as an open-ended chronology. But it is surprising how few people are interested in really knowing what is happening in our part of the world. In a world of media-and, regrettably, not disintermediated media but angled media, coverage-it is surprising that we do not have the immunity that knowledge provides to some of the fantastic stories which we hear.

As Moderator of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, I have recently joined with others to call for a clearer understanding of the code of conduct that should govern the affairs of Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land. And while many of you here today may empathise with us in our efforts, I venture to suggest that maybe, in this intercommunicated world, we should promote a better working knowledge of what is really happening on the ground. As Anthony Giddens said earlier today, globalisation is all about communication and both are fundamental to assessing the role of education. In this context, he quoted Erasmus, which brought to my mind, at least, the SOCRATES program in post-World War II Europe which I have admired from afar.

When the Peace Treaty between Jordan and Israel was signed in 1994, I sat in the audience as my late brother spoke with the late Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin. Someone asked me: How do you feel about all of this? And my response was that it was all very well; but what I really wished for was people-to-people peace, for the education of the ‘other,’ for the development of a civilised framework for disagreement. I humbly suggest that if globalisation is all about communication, it should, by rights, evolve into an understanding of the importance of conversation, of interactive talking. The open universities of the world that will be successful are those that are interactive, not those devoted to learning by rote and to monologue. I do not want Anthony Giddens to accuse me of indulging in lazy rhetoric; so I must strive to be precise in my remarks. But, simply put, I think the time has come for us to talk to each other and not at each other, and thus to share actively in those universal values which we are still fashioning and adopting.

Analysts consider that the major driving force behind scientific and technological development during the last century was global conflict. As I have already suggested, two world wars and a protracted cold war led to staggering innovations in communications, electronics, and space and aerospace technology - innovations that might be described as consequences of the ‘push effect.’ In the new millennium, the economic and market forces of a globalised world may become major catalysts for further research and development touching upon related, but previously unconnected fields, such as public policy dialogue. Living, as I do, in a part of the world where civil society is virtually non-existent, I believe that what might be referred to as the ‘pull effect’ generated by competing industries fiercely searching for new knowledge and information will have implications less for politics than for the development of policies that can be understood, introduced and transferred in an innovative manner.

We speak of a globalised marketplace; but developed countries invest only 2.8% of GDP in research, while the sum apportioned by developing counties is much less-only 0.4%. Seventy percent of our youth queuing outside of the American and other Western embassies to apply for visas do not return once they leave their native lands. One of our Indian colleagues said the other day: ”Better bargain-drain than brain-drain.” But opportunities are few. The number of R&D scientists in developed countries has reached four per thousand of the total population; in developing countries, the corresponding figure is less than 0.5. These figures mean that the 80% of the world’s population living in developing countries are at a tremendous disadvantage in terms of know-how, in terms of science and technology. My late friend, the Nobel Laureate Professor Abdul Salam, made a similar comparison in 1990, when he said that there were 3,600 scientists and engineers per million population in the industrialised world. In Israel and Japan, the figure was still higher at 5,000. But when he looked at the developing world, there were only 200 scientists or engineers per million of the population. A critical mass is lacking when it comes to scientific expertise.

We are all subjected to the impulses of the Washington consensus; and I have the greatest regard, personally, for the contribution of Jim Wolfensohn in developing a Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF). I recall a meeting in Washington a couple of years ago of the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) co-hosted by Jim Wolfensohn and Dr. George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In preparing the meeting’s final communiqué, Archbishop Carey urged that we express anger at the high level of global poverty, to which our Jain participant responded by suggesting that, rather than expressing anger, we should do something about it.

Nobel Laureates learn their skills and practice what they have learned in the laboratories of the developed world. Engineers from a variety of disciplines are exposed to an education designed precisely to train technological problem-solvers, to integrate knowledge from various disciplines in the development and use of complex technological systems, and to identify practical problems. But out of 61 million students in the world, 2% of them study in foreign countries. Of these, 70% are from developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa sends the largest proportion (14%); while the United States receives over one-third of all students studying abroad-a share which forms nearly 3% of all students there. An even greater proportion of post-graduate students studying in the United States are from the rest of the world: 28% of all graduate science students and 47% of engineering students. The challenge, then, to the South is how to convert brain-drain into brain-gain.

I know that our young men and women have established themselves in fertile soils and I hope that, as we speak of modernisation, as we speak of the idiom of tomorrow, we can also speak of a comprehensive, qualitative step forward. In education, we face the daunting challenge of preparing individuals for the information age. But the real question is this: How can you help us in managing the avalanche of information? The problem is not moving information from Ottawa, or Santiago, or Beijing to Amman; the problem is how to advance the long-awaited peer networking system, the transfer of technology, between developed and developing experiences. How do we prepare the most efficient human capital for the brain-intense marketplace?

I think that, as we speak of democratisation, whether in Bucharest or Moscow, the question is not “how much market?” or “how much at stake?” but “how much accountability?” For here we are dealing with regions where even a national census, for example, is not dynamic and relevant for one reason or another-if it is published at all. Hence, my call for an emphasis on anthropolitics in response to our moderator’s reference to anthropocentric approaches. I would like to suggest that education, to be worth anything, has to take into consideration the minimum cultural humility that President Havel referred to yesterday and today, and to which I would add freedom of expression in cultural and religious issues. Human rights as defined by the relevant UN High Commission implies the inclusion of religious and cultural rights. And, yet, we watch the domino of the Balkans destroying that region. All of my adult life, I have heard of nothing but Sarajevo, Kosovo, Western Thrace or Cyprus; but when we came to establish a regional crisis-avoidance centre-today, the new coinage is ”cultural diplomacy”-we were unable to take that step forward. Bilateralism does not rule. The poor have paid and will continue to pay. It is sad to think that it has taken an accumulation of ten WTO agreements and four EU association agreements to encourage those of us south of the Mediterranean to talk to each other. It is not regional will that motivates our desire to contribute and to participate!

Roger Morgan of the Royal Institute of National Affairs in London has said that it is important to talk about states of mind, rather than societies of states, noting, and I quote, that ”what we call ‘the European construction’ should be seen as an individual or collective construction of an intellectual kind.” I hope the moment will come, as we address the Mediterranean, that this construction can promote extra-national thinking. Europe started its efforts with a Community of Coal and Steel. Can we make a new beginning with a Community of Oil and Water, where the human environment is just as important? I recently visited Baku and saw the spaghetti junction of oil and gas pipelines, 70% and 40%, and I asked just one question: “What about the people living around the oil?” For that matter, what about the people who live around Middle-Eastern oil fields? It was the Japanese Diet in 1988 that called for a respect for oil hinterland. Anthropocentric. Anthropolitical approaches. And in the discourse from Seattle to Prague-and as one participant put it, the post-Seattle to Prague angst-the real danger, I feel, does not lie in one step forward and two steps back in terms of globalisation. If we are able to emerge from ‘Plato’s Cave’ of the last century-and I am referring here to the state of mind that led to World Wars I and II, and the Cold War-if we are able to emerge from that Cave, we must move forwards from an ethic of integration to an ethic of participation. Both the myth and reality of a GCS (Global Civic Society) are important. Let us remember that during the last two centuries it was the myth and the reality of nationhood and civil society that provided substance for liberalism and democracy. The scholar Jan Aart Scholte, of the University of Warwick, has said in his ”cautionary reflections on Seattle” that ”there is nothing inherently democratic in global civil society, whether we are talking about WEF (in Davos) or the demonstrators in Seattle… We should look beyond the dismantlement of neo-liberal globalisation to the construction of something better.”

I would like to close my remarks by reminding you of the fact that it took us a quarter of a century of dialogue-first between adherents of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, then in broader consultations with more than nine other religious groups-to develop a single-page code of conduct. And, as with any new idea, we passed through three phases of fear: fear of the ‘other’-and I see some of that fear around this table; fear of the folks back home-and I am certain there are ambassadors here who will report back what has been said, so I must be clear; and, finally, fear of truly communicating, in convincing arguments, our thoughts to a voracious media-and this despite our ostensible focus on globalisation, on universalisation and on world peace.

This code of conduct has elements relevant to the current discussion, and I would like to refer to it in my concluding remarks. First of all, it reminds us of the importance of beginning with commonality. Second, it also focuses on the need to reconsider the content of education-and here, again, I remind you of the ERASMUS model. Third, it leads us to ask ourselves how we can ensure a free flow of information-unintermediated media. And, fourth, it causes me to wonder how we can benefit in Prague, before the forthcoming ministers of education meeting, from the manner in which you are looking, courageously afresh, at your own texts, heritage and history and at those of each other.
When we use the word ‘governance’ in Arabic, we are asked why we employ a term that implies more government. This reminds me of the words written as an epitaph for the Byzantine sophist, Libanos: ”He was moved by the love of the public good.” As though this was something remarkable. Yet, if you told an Australian or an Austrian that governance means management of the public good, he would probably say: ”How patronising.” But to those of us in the developing world it sounds commendable, particularly if it includes the development of a civilised framework to cope with disagreements. This will be a vital element in the sound governance of our future actions, of our future words and of our future responsibilities for words and actions at all levels.
I would like to thank you for your patience and leave you with the following thought. I was reading a tract the other day, written in April 1506 by the last Kabbalist of Lisbon, in which he said: “Time is like a seal certifying existence. And like a seal, it is artificial. Past, present and future are really just verses of the same poem. Our goal is to trace its scheme back to God.” I would like to invite all of you to ponder this confluence of past, present and future-if there is to be a future. A French pastor once told me that we should forget the past. I think that is very convenient. But a Jewish scholar who was sitting next to me at the time commented: ”In forgetting, maybe we are eternalising that which we choose to forget.”
The time has come, I think, for me to stop talking and to listen to your comments and your interactions on how we truly manage, how we truly educate and how we truly develop knowledge, through talking to each other, rather than only at each other.

Thank you very much.

Hazel Henderson
Thank you for your wisdom. Now I would like to give the floor to Dr. Hans van Ginkel, Rector of the United Nations University.

Hans van Ginkel
I would like to thank His Royal Highness for his most impressive speech, which, I think, came really from his heart and represents what is going on in the region and beyond the region. I think it is really something to take into account.

When I was invited to talk about the contribution of science and education in developed and developing countries, I was wondering first whether I should accept this, because I’m not sure how much internal knowledge of developing countries I actually have beyond having been there fairly often.

Then I thought that for the United Nations University it would be appropriate because probably the most important reason for the UN University to exist is that it should take, in all its work, a truly global perspective - a perspective that represents the views of people from very different parts of the world. So it’s not just a university in the North or in the South but a university that is in the North and in the South. We try to bring these perspectives together and balance them, which is fairly ambitious.

When confronted with the type of problems we are confronted with nowadays, I must say that sometimes the problems really look daunting. They are so huge, that sometimes people show a very strong withdrawal reflex. Withdrawal reflexes in different styles: one is donor fatigue, saying ‘Well we did enough already, now you have to do the rest.’ Did we do enough in the right way? Can you ever answer this question, because how can you measure it? At the end of the day, when you don’t do anything do you not lose your own human dignity while you stand by and look on as things happen, where you should try to contribute to solutions?

When we look at these types of questions there is no excuse to withdraw from responsibility world-wide. There is no excuse to say that we are so hard-pressed ourselves. Representatives of the universities say: ‘We all have our financial problems’. Yes, but the financial problems of universities in the North are of a completely different level and substance than the problems inside the developing countries.

We indeed live in paradoxical times. Of course, one cannot deny the progress that has been made in many fields. Since the creation of the UN the world has recorded rapid improvements on many fronts. When people say: ‘Didn’t we do enough? and ‘This problem is always continuing’. One must ask oneself what would have been the case had we done nothing all the time? Regardless of the contributions made, the UN goals of peace and prosperity are more elusive than ever. So there is still a big task ahead and the UN Secretary-General expressed this in 1998, ‘At both the national and international levels, fundamental forces are reshaping patterns of social organisations, structures of opportunities and constraints, objects of aspiration and sources of fear. Globalisation envelops the world even as fragmentation and assertion of differences are on the rise. Zones of peace expand while outbursts of horrific violence intensify.’ That’s quite clear. Unprecedented wealth is being created, but large pockets of poverty remain endemic. The will of the people and their integral rights are increasingly both celebrated and violated. Science and technology enhance human life at the same time as their by-products threaten planetary life support systems.

It is this positive-negative image we get all the time. This contradiction is around the contribution of science and education. Great expectations do exist in society with regard to the creation of a safer world and a better life for all that both education and science can help achieve. At the same time there seems to be some vague suspicion and reservation whether education and science will be able to deliver. In fact if we look at the development of education and science over time and the problem of globalisation it is probably good to point at the magnificent work of Fernand Braudel: ‘La Mediterranée - Le monde mediterranéen ŕ l’époque de Phillipe II’

In his study, he was the first to present this whole development of shrinking distances, changing scales of time. In the work that Immanuel Wallerstein later on contributed, it was quite clear that it may be nice to talk about the first stage of globalisation some time in the 19th century, but the whole process of globalisation is much older and much more enveloping. When you look at the consequences overall, you see there are processes of up-scaling, that we are moving to ever bigger units, simplifying problems and also creating them. There are not many differences between the United Provinces becoming one state or the unification of Italy or Germany in the European Union - there is a trend to a higher-scale level.

When I was preparing for this meeting I remembered that in the early 1990s the British Committee on Higher Education invited me to a series of lectures at the Royal Society. They wanted to focus on the universities in the 21st century. Well, it’s British, so there were four lectures on Britain, one American speaker and I was there to represent the continent. Coming from such a small country, I couldn’t imagine talking about what goes on in the bigger ones, so I decided to follow a line that would make me less vulnerable and talk about the distant future.

I contributed a lecture with the title ‘Universities in 2050’. I thought, well, I won’t be around by then anyway to take the criticism. I tried to do so by rigorous thinking about what kind of processes were ahead, taking into account the process described by Braudel and Wallerstein. I came to two major processes that will confront all universities in developing and developed countries and which will deeply influence their relative position in the world, if nothing is done about it.

One is shrinking distances: increasing frequency and volume of interactions. As a consequence there is an up-sizing. If you want to compete you have to get bigger and stronger. This process could be seen in my country fairly easily when we were planning one of the polders. There was a nice indication of where the villages and the city should be taking into account the fact that people got about on bicycle. But by the time the polder was built, everyone was driving cars and 2/3 of those centres that were planned never came into existence.

This is the opposite phenomenon of what the French geographic literature calls ‘Paris et le désert français’: the fact that so many people leave rural areas and afterwards only big cities exist. These types of processes are, I think, taking place in the university world as well. They are strengthened by the second major process: increasing knowledge intensiveness, both of society and science - not so much in the humanities, but rather in the natural, environmental and biomedical sciences - means that you need such a huge investment in order to develop knowledge that most of the universities claiming to do research are not really part of the game.

What we see is a global process, what Anthony Giddens call ‘a shake-out’. There is competition, specialisation and hierarchy. We think of the world as a world of countries, but this is not really true any more. This is a world of nodes and channels. The nodes are at different levels, often in a very complex order, depending on which kind of sector of social life you are looking at. This type of development means that universities will increasingly have a different role. Many universities will see that they are doing much less research than they often think. Of course we have to keep research and training together, but when, in France, a few years ago, it was decided to establish 17 new universities in the regions and in the suburbs of Paris, they were designed to work with regional industry in order to help development; at that moment one cannot expect them to resemble the Sorbonne, or what is left of it.

I have seen the same in Namibia or other countries where a national university is established: such national universities have to serve the national or regional interests. This is the point I would make about globalisation - that you cannot speak of it without speaking of the reverse. The other side of the coin is localisation or regionalisation, where you see that on one side you must compete on a global level, but on the other side people are more inclined to be rooted in a particular region or nation. Thus the research of many universities will draw on this. They will use world-wide knowledge and customise to make it useful in the conditions where the universities have to work.

Our focus is on the impact of globalisation on education and how the latter should react or proact; that is probably not an English word, but I invented here as it is better to be earlier. When discussing the topic of the impact of globalisation on the gap between the education in the developing and developed worlds, one is increasingly hampered by the lack of meaning or the too broad meaning of the word globalisation. It is better to define a few components which make it easier to analyse what is actually going on.

Three elements of globalisation can be distinguished in relation to education. One is shrinking distances and ease of communication. The second is liberalisation of markets and economic development. The third is of a cultural homogenisation, or if you will: world culture.

Firstly there are clearly positive aspects to shrinking. For the first time in thirty years, the internationalisation of universities is a serious topic. Before that it was only a reminiscence of something that existed in the Middle Ages or just after, but not reality. So internationalisation of the universities was developed, with all it entailed in terms of staff and student exchanges, sandwich programmes, joint-research programmes, etc. Moreover information and communications technology can enable this to be leapfrogged, by sharing knowledge and catching up with those who are in front by sharing knowledge and by good knowledge-management. At the same time, it is clear that there are negative elements: the brain drain has already been mentioned, but when IT only leads to greater dependence on research that is really only going on in the North and researchers in the South have little opportunity to guide the system and the progress, they could again be on the losing side.

That is one of the comments I made about the Secretary-General’s Millennium Report with its strong emphasis on IT. Of course IT, but if we do not make sure that those doing research in the developing world have time to digest the knowledge, as Prince Hassan was indicating, to create new innovative products that can be sold on the world markets, they will end up with more expenditure instead of earning real money and contributing to further development.

The second point. The liberalisation of markets and economic development already indicate that up-scaling processes are going on. Certainly there will be an increasing dependency on the big universities outside. One should make the comment, as Giddens said that the universities will have to serve the region in helping to recuperate public space. So universities do not only have a role on the global scene but also on the national level. It would therefore be a mistake to make education private goods to be sold internationally, increasing this process of hierarchisation, which is happening, between the nodes.

Third remark about cultural homogenisation and world culture. While preparing I saw a contribution of President Ka Sem of the University of Katang only 20 years ago at the Conference of the International Association of Universities. This contribution was about universities being the guardians of man’s cultural development. He was pleading in his article, for differentiation, for freedom of thought, in order to think about development. He indicated that universities often had a strong conservative element, trying to preserve traditions as they were. I have sometimes the feeling that we are now in the opposite situation, with universities only talking about development, but forgetting about the past. In that sense we have to keep a balance.

I think that President Khatami of Iran made a good contribution when he pleaded for a dialogue among civilisations. In relations between developed and developing countries I am not sure that the developed countries take this topic seriously enough. I was invited for the summit meeting as a speaker, who spoke after the politicians. There were ten politicians speaking: 5 from Islamic countries and 5 from African countries, with no speaker from the North present. This is a missed chance in the relationship between the developed and developing countries.

When we look at what is needed in the process of globalisation is a readiness to know the other. For knowledge of the other there is a need to open up, and there, I think, education comes in, not just in universities but also at primary and secondary levels. Not just in the sense of a new program stressing more computer science, arithmetic or English. What we really need is knowledge of geography, history and social sciences of the parts of the world. Dialogue involves understanding, but it is very difficult to have a dialogue with no basic understanding of the partner you discuss with.

So we need really a new pedagogy, new educational programmes at primary and secondary school, as in the 19th century when schools were used to socialise the next generations into the country in which they were living. We now need education that will socialise the next generation as world citizens understanding the rest of the world. Then I think that there could start a feeling of caring and sharing for each other. This is not just a matter of educational programs, but also looking at textbooks being used. I would like to mention an example. In Europe, a major role was played by the Council of Europe project whereby textbooks from different European countries were examined to see what they were saying about each other. I think it is time to have similar cross- referencing of school books on a global level.

DISCUSSION

Hazel Henderson
Now we have a panel of respondents. First Professor Shiraishi from the University of Kyoto.

Takashi Shiraishi
We have had two eloquent speeches. It is difficult to make some intelligent comments without time for digestion. Instead of making a direct comment I would like to highlight and underline two points, which have been mentioned this afternoon and this morning but have not received enough attention so far.

One is the question of language and the other is the question of the state. I would like to start with something rather personal. Prague in my mind is very much associated with a friend of mine, a historian, a Czech, now teaching in the US, a leading Asia historian, who wrote an excellent book on an Indonesian thinker, who served as the first Prime Minister of Indonesia in the 1940s. The book is written in English but has Dutch and Indonesian quotations, because Indonesia was under Dutch control until the early 1940s. More importantly, this book is full of quotations of Czech writers, such as Čapek, Kafka and so on, as well as other European writers.

The Indonesian thinker, who is the subject of this book, read Čapek, in English translation. My friend had read Čapek in both English and Czech and had some very interesting things to say about this Indonesian’s reading and misreading of Čapek because he had read it in English translation. In so doing, he examined the way that this Indonesian thinker’s mind worked.

It is very interesting to see the city, which ‘produced’ him, so to speak. I still remember being very impressed by his profound intellectuality - something that came from his command of many languages, something I guess quite natural for the majority of Czechs, but something very unusual for the majority of Japanese. He had Czech as his mother tongue, but he also had English, German, French, Dutch, Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese and Indonesian. It was his command of all these languages that allowed him to read texts and produce a book, which is already a classic on Asian history. We all know that English has become the world language, as no other language can become, due to the world hegemony of two English-language powers, the British and the Americans, for the last 300 years.

I do not say this in a bid to call for a counter-hegemonic language movement. I’m fully aware that, whether you like it or not, English will remain as a world language. After all, we are here and communicating with each other in English.

However, there is a danger involved in having English as the world language. I was recently horrified to learn that a Filipino classic was translated into Japanese, not from the Spanish original, but from the English translation. You can imagine how much can be lost if you translate a book via English by double-translation. But this is happening all the time in many places. In this case a Spanish language novel, written by a Filipino, has been reduced into trash. We live in a world, where English is the world language, but this will not and should not reduce the importance to learn other people’s languages - for a Japanese to learn Czech, for a Czech to learn Indonesian and for an Indonesian to learn Polish, etc. Each language has its own history, its own culture and its own genius.

If we let market forces run the course, we can be sure that Czech will not be taught in any Indonesian university and pretty sure that Indonesian would not be taught in a small European country, etc. We need to find a way to ensure that people learn other people’s languages, other than English, as a third or fourth language. We also have to make sure that translations have to be made from the original and not via English, so that we can enjoy our differences.

Globalisation is not the same as Americanisation. If we let market forces run globalisation, we may end up with Americanisation, losing in the process all geniuses we have inherited in our different languages.

This leads me to the second point. I f we cannot let market forces dictate our future, what can we rely on? In the 19th century and early 20th century, it was the state that was expected to safeguard our common and public interests. But now we live in a world now where the failure of the nation state cannot be denied. Not all of them, but in the world there are several, which are failing. We also know that although the nationalist project gave hope to many colonised people who invested in it, it is now bankrupt.

We witness, therefore, that in many places across the globe people do not believe that the state will safeguard their interests. What to rely on, if we cannot rely on the state? I don’t think that any conventional answer can be made through education and science. Here I think it is fundamental to the question of underdevelopment, and finding a solution to the major challenge to our topic, which is education and science.

Hazel Henderson
Now I would like to call on Professor Eduardo Marcal Grilo.

Eduardo Marcal Grilo
I would like to stress two or three points, emphasising the enormous importance of education in this globalisation process. We are trying to understand and to live in this globalised world. As it was said this morning, by Professor Giddens, globalisation is a process towards increasing complexity and this is probably the main reason why we have to educate citizens to participate in the global process.

Unfortunately, what we are doing at the moment is to grow customers, as was said this morning. In a certain way we are teaching our children to be good consumers and not to be participant citizens. Probably, we have to change something, not only with regard to the content of education but also to the way schools are managed.

Let me point out some aspects I regard as important. If we look at the newspapers or if we watch television or even if we go through the Internet, nowadays a large number of the news items and the articles are dealing with supply and demand, markets, with the Dow Jones and Nasdaq, with the stock markets, with the merger of companies and groups, with profits, with targets, with project financing and with the internal rates of return and with the Washington consensus as mentioned by His Highness, which deals mainly with the economic indicators But where are the people, where are the citizens? How can we educate people when we forget them?

Particularly as was mentioned by the teacher this morning, who talked so well, when she said when we face our students in the classroom we don’t know what they are thinking or what problems are affecting them. It is very interesting because in the seminars and the conferences, everything seems very rosy and we have a solution for everything, but when the teacher is in front of the students, what are the solutions? The solutions are not in the official newspapers, the law or the official despatch from the Ministry. They have to be in the classroom between the teacher and the students.

I speak as a university professor, but I think we talk too much about universities. We have too much of a monopoly on the debate about education. For two reasons, due to the students and their unions, who are active politically, and due to the fact that universities are always asking for more money. These are the main reasons why they are on the front pages. In my view, basic education is the most important part. By basic education I don’t just mean primary and secondary, but also pre-primary. Let’s talk about when the children are 3, 4, 5 years old. It is probably for this reason that education is one of the issues of the US election and for one of the candidates, pre-primary education also.

When we talk about basic education, what are we talking about? I paid enormous attention to what was said by the former Prime Minister of Poland regarding values. First of all, basic education is basic knowledge, such as mother language, mathematics, history, geography etc. It is not possible to educate a citizen if he cannot read, write and do some arithmetic. Despite what some educationalists say, studying, teaching and learning are difficult matters sometimes. Beyond basic knowledge we have to train people to have certain types of attitudes and behaviours, the capacity to exercise initiative, to have the autonomy, the responsibility and, above all, the capacity to choose. In practical life they must choose every day.

Finally there are the values. At a conference in Germany I was told by an American professor not to talk about values, as we would get a disagreement in the audience. We must realise that the most important value is tolerance. This is the basis for the respect for peace, the respect for life, for solidarity, respect for religion and respect for freedom. All of these values are based on democracy, and fortunately democracy is spreading all over the world.

This morning, someone referred to universal ethics. I think it is exactly on the basis of universal ethics that we can understand each other. On the other hand, Anthony Giddens mentioned this morning that economic development is the tool to fight against poverty. This is true; however, it is not possible to use this without a comment. The comment is this. If we do not invest in education simultaneously with the economic investment, we may give into exploitation of low-cost labour and child labour. Education for me is not a product to be consumed by the ones who have money. I agree with Anthony Giddens on having to combine state initiative and market activity.

Two more comments regarding the developing countries. I feel that the support to the developing countries has been an enormous failure particularly from international organisations. The World Bank has invested billions of dollars in education in developing countries. It is not possible to draw an investment plan without reshaping the Bretton Woods Agreements. It’s not possible to have coherent economic and financial activity in the developing countries without reshaping Bretton Woods.

My last point is in regard to Europe. It was Jean Monet who said that if he could start the rebuilding of Europe it would be on the basis of education and culture. The next step should be the enlargement of the EU, but don’t do it just on a market basis.

Hazel Henderson
I call on Professor Manfred Max-Neef, the Rector of the Universidad Austral de Chile.

Manfred A. Max-Neef
Nine months and sixteen days ago, we witnessed the end of the interminable 20th century, the most paradoxical of all centuries, because never in human history have we accumulated so much knowledge and never in human history did we destroy so much. The big question that arises is what is the correlation between knowledge and destruction. It strikes me that so much has been said today and so many times the word knowledge has been mentioned. It has always been mentioned in a positive light as something that we need even more of. I have reflected about this contradiction between knowledge and destruction in the 20th century.

My conclusion is that it has occurred because we have reached a stage in our human evolution in which we really know a lot, but we understand very little. I think that is the key. Describing and explaining, which is what we do in science, is what adds up to knowledge, but it does not bring understanding. Understanding is a step beyond; it has to do with enlightenment and with wisdom. We have stressed too much describing and explaining and postponed the possibilities of roads that lead to enlightenment and wisdom. My hopes were that we might evolve from a century of knowledge to a century of understanding. This is not easy, as we are not adequately prepared to bring this about.

His Royal Highness described it very nicely as speaking to each other and not at each other; a dialogue. Dialogue is also a matter of scale. No dialogue can be possible in a gigantic environment. Gigantism is something that turns you into a number; in gigantism you can be an efficient object, but not a creative subject. Dialogue can take part on a human scale where you have your own identity, you have a name, your own identity. How much is globalisation contributing to the human scale? How much is dialogue becoming possible?

Knowing much and understanding little is one of the main characteristics of our times. There is another one. In the Middle Ages, there was a universal dictum in the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic world that not everything that is possible is desirable. There were limits. Now we have reached a stage where everything that is possible is desirable. If you combine a situation of not understanding and a state where everything that is possible is desirable you have a tremendously explosive equation. This is the explosive equation with which we open the 21st century.

Very little has been said about science here, and I would like to conclude with that. I received an e-mail from Monica, who asked me to say what is the most important global problem facing the world today. I gave a short answer. It seems to me that the dominant technologies of the 21st century: robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology pose - despite the fascination they irradiate - some colossal threats. The weapons of mass destruction of the 20th century - i.e. nuclear, chemical and biological - required access to very rare raw materials, to a very complex and expensive infrastructure, to huge teams of experts and they were part of a system of highly-protected information. They were very large scale activities not subject to systems of rigid control.

The attributes of the new technologies - robotics, genetic-engineering and nanotechnology - make them so potentially dangerous. They all share an amplifying capacity. They can self-replicate. A bomb blows up only once, but one bomb can become many and get quickly out of control. The second point is that their production is small scale and within the reach of small groups that escape any possible control. Thirdly they do not require large facilities, as knowledge alone and small laboratories are sufficient. Finally, the new technologies have commercial uses, which are enormously lucrative. The fact is that they are almost exclusively being developed by corporate enterprises. Let us not forget that the race for the genome was won by a corporation and not by the universities.

If, in addition, we consider that globalisation represents the consolidation of unlimited corporate power, above and beyond any form or mechanism of public scrutiny and control, we can only conclude that the use of such technologies will not be guided by collective interests but only by lucrative impulses. We should also bear in mind that, as with nuclear armaments, history shows that it is easier to devise destructive uses for technology than constructive ones. It will not be weapons, but knowledge that may provoke mass destruction in the new century, unless we do something about it.

This is the big challenge faced by higher education and by governments and also by the state, despite all the negative aspects that have been mentioned about it. The big question is - Can we do it? I believe we can. I believe that also it is part of technological development, particularly in communication that, if adequately used, may spread the information and generate the consciousness among people, to exert, as civil society, the pressure to prevent dramatic outcomes in a world predominantly controlled by economic interests of huge trans-national oligopolies. I don’t have the answer, but I must confess, being a university rector and being a scientist, that I am quite afraid. I would love to be optimistic, but I have my serious doubts, although my hope is that we will react in time.

But let us not fool ourselves with definitions that globalisation is this and it is not that. What is happening is something that is very, very big and we do not know how to control it, whatever your definition is. There is still time and the precondition is to not fool ourselves.

Hazel Henderson
I would like to call on our Forum 2000 student representative that is Mr. Výlupek. Please take the floor.

Lukáš Výlupek
I originally thought that maybe my contribution would be a little off the topic, but after hearing the previous contribution it seems like a great start for my ideas.

I am aware of the fact that at this conference we have talked a lot about the impact of science and the new technologies on the world in positive and negative ways. I would like to say something slightly different. We should look at science in two parts, as social sciences, on the on hand, and natural or technical science, on the other. What was the last development in the social sciences, or in sociology? What is wonderful about new developments in psychology or economics? I am not sure what the answer is. They are hardly comparable with what has happened in mathematics, physics, etc. The problem is that there will occur a huge gap between these sciences and the natural sciences.

Technical science is responsible for the huge and wonderful developments in the world. However, social science should be responsible for the balance of this society, for every human being, but I don’t think that they are doing their job very well. Social sciences are no longer able to deal with this new era of enormous changes we usually call globalisation. We have mentioned the problems - child labour, global warming, poverty, these can be seen as proof that humankind is simply not able to understand why the world develops in such directions. We don’t know how to deal with the uncertainty. We don’t know how to create positive chaos. We don’t know how to find the tools to discover the deep logic of all these problems.

I almost hear the whispering in the hall that maybe you cannot compare the two sciences. I am aware that society is changing all the time and that what is true right now doesn’t necessarily have to be true in five minutes, something that doesn’t happen in physics, for example. I also know that this world is full of paradoxes. The word paradox was mentioned here many times. This could be the key, because as we know in the natural sciences, a paradox is not acceptable. If you have one then it means you are wrong somewhere. In social sciences we have a lot of paradoxes and it doesn’t mean something is wrong. This could be the key. Maybe in the course of development the paradox will disappear.

The problem is that the world is waiting for clear answers, which we are used to getting. The role of the social scientist should be far harder than the role of a natural scientist, as he cannot give clear answers. The biggest issue is to find dynamic answers, dynamic tools or even dynamic theories to give us the knowledge we are lacking in this field. Maybe it sounds like we are waiting for a new Albert Einstein, or more accurately an Isaac Newton. It seems that we are still blaming the apple for falling down every summer and we are not asking why.

I would like to thank the organisers for such a good conference, a brilliantly organised event. The need for such an event makes one a little scared. The existence of such a forum is an example of what I am talking about. The forum is the only way we can do something about global problems of the world. We can only organise conferences and put the best brains of the world together. We can only try and find the best solution and hope we are not wrong. This is our only choice we have as we are not getting the right answers from science.

Maybe it scares me a little more as a member of the younger generation: I cannot imagine a future where we are not getting answers from science... And we will organise more and more conferences just to solve problems. I hope this is not the only way. Finally, I would like to say that we cannot give up. We have to keep asking why the apple keeps falling from the tree and keep asking the scientists to provide us with the answers. Such dynamic scientific knowledge would be the best content for global education in and for the future. This would help experts in the developing countries, where we feel this gap even more intensely. We have to erase the scientific gap. Then we can hopefully understand how to erase the gap between these two separate worlds. Maybe some would say that I believe too much in theoretical science, but I would like to quote one of my professors who tells me ‘There is nothing more practical than a good scientific theory’

Hazel Henderson
On that sombre note let us open the floor for comments. First it is Mr Yousif al-Khoei.

Yousif al-Khoei
I have a question about multicultural societies. Due to globalisation, there have been a lot of population movements, creating a lot of minorities, especially in Western countries. There is a serious problem, especially among second and third generations, in education, with more and more of these minorities trying to assert their identity and sometimes their faith. I know of problems over collective worship, over the teaching of history and I would like to ask if there are any good examples or any countries where the teaching of language and faith are taken seriously.

Hazel Henderson
The next speaker is former President Lee of Taiwan.

Lee Teng-hui
Allow me to talk from some experience on this issue. I would like to make some comments about technological transfers between the developed and developing countries. The issue between the developed and developing world is the so-called North-South divide - a gap between rich and poor nations. Although developed countries also face the problem of the gap between the rich and the poor in their domestic economies, it can be gradually solved through policy change and institutional reforms. Therefore the gap between the rich nations and the poor nations is an international process, a global process, along with the universal acceptance of the concept that all humans are created equal. The severity of the North-South divide is also gaining attention. Whether scientific and technological skills can resolve the North-South issue will be determined by the developed and developing nations’ own criteria and their degree of self-reliance. How can we raise the productivity of developing nations? How to reduce inequality and maintain equal allocation of resources? Recent scientific and technical advances can almost already overcome most natural environmental barriers, except for the size of your territory and water resources, as a natural obstacle, or historical, social and environmental factors cannot hinder the application of modern science. Modern science and technology invented by developed European and American countries should also be suitable for use by other regions with some revisions. The basic solution of poverty is the spread of scientific progress- this can help breach the gap between the developed and developing nations, but it cannot completely erase poverty. This is because leading technologies rely on high energy consumption; they are capital intensive and labour saving which is at odds with the global reality of population increase and limited resources in the developing countries. With such contradictions and without some adjustments, simply relying on the transfer of modern technologies, it will not be possible to solve the North-South issue. Science and technology also cannot solve differences between the economic and political systems or between the North-South nations.

Hazel Henderson
Mr Capra asked for the floor.

Fritjof Capra
Yes, a quick comment on what Mr Shiraishi said. In support of your statement that native and indigenous languages should remain and be supported, I would like to report some exciting results from cognitive science. Cognitive linguists have discovered that our mind is fundamentally embodied, in the sense that all our concepts grow out of our bodily experiences. A simple example: when we say that the cat sits in front of the tree - a tree doesn’t have a front or a back, but our body does. We project our bodily experiences to the tree. In some languages the cat sits behind the tree. This metaphoric projection of our bodily experience to an abstract realm constitutes the richness of our thought. The richer and more sophisticated our thought the more metaphors we use and these can come from our bodily experience, but if they are more sophisticated they could be culturally determined. For example if I say I am ‘spinning my wheels’, it is a metaphor taken from a car in snow or mud. A culture that uses a horse and cart is not spinning its wheels, as the experience is not there.

I say this in support of using indigenous language for their wealth of metaphors.

Hazel Henderson
I would like to call on Mr Shah from Nepal.

Sanjeev Kumar Shah
Education, university and globalisation. What confuses me is whether the role of education should be to give the tools to people to meet the demand of the market or the ability to change the structure of the market itself?
Thank you.

Hazel Henderson
Mrs Moserová from UNESCO.

Jaroslava Moserová
My name is Jaroslava Moserová I am a senator in this country and otherwise I am the President of the General Conference of UNESCO. I am using this opportunity to bring you tidings from UNESCO, which held its biennial conference last year where there were 186 representatives of government who spoke. They came from different countries, cultures, political background, but they had one thing in common, they all placed education as their priority. By education they not only meant the acquisition of knowledge, but also the acquisition of skills, of civic virtues. After listening to the representatives one realises how relative things are and what difficult situations some countries have to cope with. When we talk of the modern information highways, one has to remind oneself that less than 3% of the world’s population has access to Internet. Unless a solar programme is implemented, some countries will not have access because they don’t have electricity. For many countries it is not higher education but basic education and access to it that is the problem.

When the Executive Board of UNESCO sits, most of the delegates are discussing precisely the same things we have been discussing today. All of the delegates that come from countries that are poor or impoverished by conflict - and let’s face it a developed country can become a developing one due to conflict - fear that global networking will somehow marginalise their countries, for the reasons already stated: that no one will invest in an insecure country. Also, many were concerned with ethics - in science, the media, in politics. There is no fear of scientists or scientific development, but there is real fear of the misuse of scientific advancement, and I agree with chancellor of the Chilean university that there is indeed something to fear.

Many years ago I translated Jacob Bronowski’s book ‘The Ascent of Man’. At the end of his book he wrote that many people who worked in physical sciences suddenly got scared by the results they achieved by the way they were used, and they escaped to biological sciences. Where are they going to escape to now? I would like to thank HRH for his introductory speech, Shukran. I would also like to thank Colm, because he brought a ray of hope, that the younger generation does have foresight, which makes me optimistic.

Hazel Henderson
Many people have spoken about this lag between the physical sciences and the rate of technological innovation and the slow lane: the rate of social innovation. This is something that has concerned me a great deal. Mr Armbruster from Lancaster University in the UK now has the floor.

Lars Christof Armbruster
The theme of today was been education, education, education. I would like to return to the question posed this morning about how globalisation contributes to education and how education could contribute to globalisation. Then more specifically, whether education can help bridge the divide between the North and the South. I have been listening and taking notes, and trying to makes sense of what I heard around the table and in the room. Perhaps I could ask for some feedback on how actually it is perceived that education might impact on globalisation. We’ve heard about how globalisation impacts on science, on knowledge, also about how some results of science are possibly dangerous or problematical. Have we heard whether education could make a difference? More provocatively whether the people here in the schools and in the universities can see that what they are doing can make a difference? What kind of education would make a difference, what relation between teachers and students? Thank you.

Hazel Henderson
Excellent question and I hope that someone from the panel will address it. I have two people on the list. Dr. Asma Jahangir.

Asma Jahangir
I have very short comments to make. What we didn’t talk about was integrity in the whole question of globalisation. In our country people say that if you look at the damage that educated people have done in Pakistan, it is far more than that done by the thousands and millions of illiterates. So they do link it up with the question of lack of qualitative political leadership. It is political leadership that has to work with integrity. There is also the question in their minds of globalisation lacking in integrity. They feel that there is a partnership between the people of the North and the elite of the South, who work globalisation to their advantage leaving behind millions of people. The people in our part of the world, who are underprivileged, feel that decision-making lies with those who can afford to make decisions and have sophisticated means of implementing their decisions via various committees, treaties, etc., where decisions are given in a legalistic manner. The only method left to them is to attract attention by using crude tactics, which worries a person like me. The argument is that only crude tactics have got the attention of the globalised international community. These are the challenges we all face; it is not just a question of education per se, but of education directed at the decision-makers not only the illiterates. It is education that must include integrity; it is education to encourage social movements rather than militant movements.

Hazel Henderson
Our distinguished Chairman of this morning Professor Jařab.

Josef Jařab
I feel that we are moving in a circle, not a vicious circle, maybe a globalised circle, when we talk about whether education is the cure to the growing the gap between the haves and the have-nots of the world. At the end of his presentations, Professor Giddens suggested that the cure to economic problems lies in economics. I think that at first you can accept that, but what do we mean by that? I’m sure he would not stop at economics. From my experience in local politics, that it has to be political decisions with economic support to make education be able to bridge the growing gap.

I would also like to say that integrity in the largest possible sense is something that should be an objective of education. I believe that the basic chain of education starts with family, basic education, community, civil society and institutions in civil society. Politicians should be educated and can be educators, as can the media. Again this is a circle: where do we start?

I remember that in 1989, after the Velvet Revolution, we saw our future in very bright colours, probably brighter than the reality proved to be. We didn’t know where to start; as a matter of fact, you have to start everywhere. Perhaps too much has been said here about universities. However, teachers are trained at universities so needed changes at kindergarten level called for the proper training of teachers. I think it is a great challenge to decide and analyse the situation rationally and reason is one of the tools to give some thought to the growing gap, because that gap marginalises the have-nots and threatens small communities. Education is, in a complex, not a simplistic way, the only way forward for survival of humanity on this planet.

Hazel Henderson
Mr. Singh has asked for the floor.

Karan Singh
In his opening remarks Prince Hassan made an important observation that the quality of hatred seems to be growing. Hatred blinds us to the humanity of the other. This is indeed a very dangerous trend. The two young student leaders have also asked similar questions. One asked why social science is lagging behind so much compared to the advancements made in natural sciences. The other asked how education can solve the problems that we face. This links in well with the point that Asma Jahangir made. There are regimes in the world where the education system is specifically geared to creating hatred, towards fomenting antagonism against the other. If you instil violence and hatred against other groups and other faiths into young children, that education is distorting the base of their consciousness. We need an education for a global society. There needs to be a structure of educational inputs that are global in their outreach and are able to cut across these barriers. How can we get our message across to people who, for example, live in regimes that may not allow this? That is one of the challenges we face.

I would have thought that the UN University should have been a pioneer in global education. Where are the modules? Where are the pilot projects on global evolution and global education that the world is waiting for? Will it be the LSE or the UN University that will pilot such a project? That is where the people sitting around the table have to get together and in their own ways and in their own countries, in their own societies that have to pioneer this new educational philosophy - education for the global society. We can go on and discuss these things until we are blue in the face, but unless someone actually does something then it will not make a difference. It is ultimately the educators and the political leadership that have to do it. Where the political leadership is reactionary, revanchist and backward-looking, we have to find a way to get to the students directly.

Hazel Henderson
I would like to make a point about misuse of education, which I have seen in my own country; what I refer to as ‘intellectual mercenaries’. They are all over Washington DC. They all have their corporate clients and they are lobbied onto public science bodies to give so-called ‘objective information’. They are really intellectual mercenaries.

I would like to call on Mr. Lajda from the Inter-religious and International Federation for World Peace.

Juraj Lajda
Thank you very much. Today we are talking about globalisation and education. I think that globalisation has two aspects, internal and external. Some people talk more about the external aspects and some people talk more about the internal aspects. I think that education starts from childhood; we cannot talk only about universities. What we are missing is talking about how to educate character. Our school system concentrates on practical knowledge. How much do we concentrate on the education of character? In this sense, family plays a very important role. We should educate people for a civil society. I would suggest that we need to focus on education of character, the role of the family and education for civil society. My questions: If global processes, both internal and external are to be successful, we need some common values. What are these values? How can we find these common or universal values?

Hazel Henderson
And now Mr Ohnutek, who will speak in Czech.

Jiří Ohnutek
I would like to refer to the question "what to teach?" and "how to teach it?". Firstly, ecology, an interdisciplinary science, has to be taught. There are only few of those who have capability to teach it. They include Professor Meadows, for instance, with his publication "Beyond the Limits”.

Further, we should learn directly from nature, as we are, above all, animals and a herd species. Without respect for nature there is no hope.

Hazel Henderson
Heather McDougall, a student from the USA.

Heather McDougall
I just wanted to address the question as whether education can make an impact and share a personal anecdote with you that may give you inspiration that it does. When I started university I viewed it as a way to make money; I went there in order to get the piece of paper to get the high-paying job. But I stumbled on a fabulous professor, who challenged me to think beyond money, to think about philosophy, Plato and getting out of that cave. That motivated me to drastically change my life. I’m now studying a PhD in order to become a professor and I run a non-profit-making organisation for other students. I simply wanted to say that there are people out there who just need opportunity and experience and I challenge any teachers or any aspiring teachers here to make that difference and to instil in people what President Havel says is our own responsibility to recognise that everything you do impacts not only yourself but everybody else.

Hazel Henderson
Now a student from Amsterdam. Mr Kamphuijs.

Jesse Kamphuijs
I am a philosophy student from Amsterdam and was a participant in the Students’ Forum of 1999. My question relates to Mr. Singh’s remarks about the education of hatred. We should also be aware that hatred has an industry, the war industry, which is economically very profitable for many countries. This contributes to economic growth in many Western and developing countries. Education as part of teaching how to create rather than to destroy will enhance further development in education.

Hazel Henderson
You make a very good point. Mr Merry from the Students’ Forum.

Peter Merry
Thank you. I have been helping out with the Students’ Forum 2000 and particularly with a training course for decentralised activities. It is a project where students get the chance to prepare, implement and evaluate projects in the community, so very concrete results of these kinds of discussions. I wanted to come back to Ranjeev’s question, which was - ‘Is education there to transform the system or to educate people to engage with it?’ I think it does both. I think that you have to understand where the system is at present to be able to engage with it and transform it. I think that concept has to lie at the heart of a new approach to learning that we need to take. It is one of complexity, which by its nature makes it hard to talk about; it is not a nice linear argument because everything is inter-connected.

At this year’s Students’ Forum, Professor Howard Williamson said that we need to help people how to be able to ‘read situations’. Within that context there are two important things. One is developing a set of values against which we can measure and make judgements on experiences that we have. The second thing is to have a critical faculty to be able to be used to thinking in that way so that we can engage and take a decision. The key to that is to go beyond control and certainties, which Lukáš’s intervention from the Students’ Forum addressed, i.e. the traditional way that science looks at things is reductionist: we reduce things down to their specific areas and look at the parts as opposed to the inter-relations between the parts. We need a new approach that lets go of those certainties. That and a level of multiculturalism have to be good as it will get rid of stereotypes and prejudices. That has to be good for citizenship because if we are able to read situation we are also able to engage with them. That - excitingly - is at the heart of what people are requiring in the knowledge society: to be able to deal with the large flows of information that are going around. We need to have a critical faculty, to be able to take the right information and act on it. This is then an approach to learning that addresses the moral issues of how to deal with a multicultural society and encourage people to engage in society - while at the same time equipping them with the tools that businesses are asking for in terms of the information and knowledge society. They are not contradictory but complementary. That is how I think that education can have an impact on globalisation. A final concept from Howard Williamson regarding the role of teacher and the teacher-student relationship: he said the educator had to be transformed from ‘the sage on the stage to the guide by the side’.

Hazel Henderson
You’ve brought us back to a question that has been floating around all day. How much education takes place in universities, and what about all these other venues for education? Public education, political-leadership kind of education, often mis-education by television, and the potential of the media as education. Thank you for bringing us back to that broader view.

We now have Ms Kjellsen from Students’ Forum 2000.

Karina Birkeland Kjellsen
To me it is a little weird that we are talking about the inequalities in the world that are growing tremendously fast. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing so fast and it’s sad. Then we don’t recognise that what is going on at a global level is only a reflection of how we interact with each other on an intimate level. It seems to be that it’s OK to take advantage of other people. That is OK in many cultures. The step forward for my ego justifies stepping over others. As long as that’s OK in cultures then it will go on happening at world level. Education does have an impact on our lives. Whatever I do now, I learned from kindergarten, through elementary school, high school and universities. It impacts on me. I think we need to keep that in mind.

Hazel Henderson
Clearly these issues are very difficult as there is no response to these challenging questions from around the table

From the audience

I would like to stress the potential of non-formal education taking into account that most people drop out of school or maybe went to school forty years ago. With greater life-expectations, there are so many people that need to be re-educated. In view of the fact that most people live in cities and that state and public education has proved inadequate, I would like to give a concrete example of how to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. I refer to the International Association of Educating Cities, which sees the city as a learning space and which involves community leaders, mayors and grass-roots organisations in the education for citizenship and education for peace. I would like to stress this, this potential of providing education to those who do not have access to universities or schools, but also need to learn to live with others. I see there is a gap between the rich and the poor, but if you look at most mega-cities in the world there is a rich downtown city surrounded by slums, so we see that the people do not interact with people living a kilometre away although they may have friends through the Internet. I, for example, have many friends in Paris, but have problems interacting between people from the slums near my place. I think that the city and public space, like squares, theatres, museums, could be a place to develop a more local citizenship.

Hazel Henderson
Now a friend from Portugal.

From the audience
Two short comments. The first about the comments made by Professor Max Neef about his fear of the future when it comes to science. There was a very interesting book published last year on the results of a conference held in Italy. One of the participants mentioned that in the 20th century there were two main risks - the nuclear risk and the genetic risk. The nuclear risk had its alarm in Chernobyl. What he said was that we can expect a Chernobyl in the genetic, biotechnological sphere.

My second remark refers to one point that was mentioned here in Colm’s presentation where he said that we have to reject determinism. I agree entirely with this. Because as Prigochin says: We are moving from a world of determinist laws to a world of possibilities and probabilities. This is true in physics and biology but also in social sciences. To live in a society moving from determinism to possibilities and probabilities, the role of each one increases somewhat and we have the possibility to interact with society and to change. As was mentioned here with reference to Pakistan, that interaction can be in a good direction or it can be in a wrong direction. If we increase the level of education of the population, if we increase the dissemination of the basic values, I think we can move in a positive direction.

Hazel Henderson
At this point I will ask His Royal Highness El Hassan bin Talal for some additional remarks and then I will call on Dr. van Ginkel.

El Hassan bin Talal
I would just like to go back to Manfred Max-Neef who said that there is too much explaining and describing and too little enlightenment and wisdom, My understanding is that we are the children of the same Enlightenment. At least my tutor when we I was studying divinity used to say that we are children of the same Enlightenment. But in terms of social sciences, Enlightenment spoken of in the West really starts in the 1700s; if we go to globalisation, pacific trade existed for 600 years from the Atlantic Coast of Morocco to India and today’s Indonesia. Then one day Vasco de Gama arrived off of the coast of Malabar he says to the pacific Jain king, ‘Expel the Arabs or I will kill you’ (and the Arabs were Jews, Christians and Muslims) and the Jain king said, ‘What is kill?’

So I think it is worth bearing in mind that civilising trade is not specific to this day and age and that the concept of civilising trade can be revisited. Secondly I want to comment on the word dialogue. A lot has been said about dialogue in education. Believe me, in most of our schools the length and breadth of our expanded region there is no emphasis on dialogue; in fact it is not even tolerated. The other day I was in Indonesia and we met with the representatives of Irian Jaya, Ambon, Ache and Timor and I said: you are the servants of the community and we are the servants of the servants (we were travelling with the World Conference on Religion and Peace), how can we reach some reconciliation conversation? They included not only the Cardinal and the principal representatives of the community, Buddhists, Muslims, etc., but also the positivists, young men and women like our student leaders here, who had put their necks on the line for reconciliation.

They basically said that in 40 years of martial law they were not encouraged to talk to each other. ‘We have always worked against something, now give us something to work for’. I have heard the same in Soweto, where people said: ‘We have always worked against Apartheid, now we are working against xenophobia. We want to work positively for something’. I would like to suggest the educational process is crucially important and that this profile of the Erasmus methodology is worth visiting and learning from. The question was asked by a clerical gentleman a moment ago as to what values we share. I would like to summarise the suggestion the World Parliament of Religions that for a new World Order needs a new World Ethos as its basis. Every human being must be treated in a humane way. We talk of rich and poor, but it’s not just about money, it’s also about the quality of life. It’s also about tolerance, respect for human life, justice, equality and fruitfulness.

I would like to refer to our colleague from our Indonesian visit, Leonard Swidler from Temple University Philadelphia, who suggested that the general rights and duties of a human being include the freedom to develop oneself. I would to refer to the student leaders by suggesting that this right of each human being to develop his or her abilities by choosing values is the precondition of ethical responsibility.

Each human being must be treated as having intrinsic value and not treated as a mere object. We have tens of thousands of graduates from our part of the world and if you ask them if they have a job ten or twelve years after graduation they reply sadly, that they will only accept a job commensurate with their social standing. It is very easy to say that one should convince them to recycle their abilities. In Quebec, last year, I attended the first ever meeting of Polytechnics and Community Colleges. It was the first time that this large critical mass of young people was actually being involved on a broad educational basis. I don’t want to go on about responsibilities, but I think it is only fair to suggest that self-realisation is love for one’s neighbour, but I didn’t feel much of that love in the Balkans. When we spoke of reconciliation in November of last year - we were at a meeting of Catholic and Orthodox, Jews and Muslims - the Muslim representative said something that is important to this meeting: ‘Think of the covenant of Noah. Noah created an Ark for the salvation of humanity, can we create an Ark for the salvation of our common humanity?’

I would like to suggest that as we look at universal solidarity and efficient social policy, it includes education for equity, competitiveness and citizenship. It also understands the baggage that each of us brings with us. There was a question as to why the violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Is it religious, nationalist or a search for equality? It is probably all of those. Maybe if there was a sense of sharing in education for equity, competitiveness and citizenship, then there would be a certain tranquillity in one’s own mind.

I was asked a question about the position of minorities. In our part of the world, the Cardinal of Bologna recently made the statement that Italy should close down its mosques until Muslim countries respect the rights of Christians. With all due respect I would like to say to the gentleman, that Christianity came to our part of the world long before it came to Italy. I would like to say that we have 14 types of Christian denominations and when we say Arab, don’t stereotype us as Muslim. If we want to understand the origins of Christianity, I think it is crucial to recognise that it is very much part of the fabric of our society. Regarding minorities, we must remember that there are 21.5 million refugees dealt with by the High Commission for Refugees. There are 60 million IDPs - internally-displaced persons - and there are 300 million environmental refugees in the world. If you consider them minorities, well they are pretty sizeable minorities.

When I received the Kosovar refugees on the Bulgarian-Turkish border, I asked them ‘what do you want?’ and they said ‘Albanian schoolbooks’, and when I met them in New Brunswick in Canada, they said the same. No one considers the human impact of war. The lady from UNESCO spoke of the effect of conflict. In the Iraq-Kuwait affair, our country, a small country of 5 million people, received 300,000 people. We had moved from a two-stream education system and had to move back to it to accommodate the people in schoolrooms. The same applies all over the world. No one considers the education effects or ecological consequences, for instance.

Without a regional aménagement de territoires, how can we hope to drink water? Mention was made of weapons of mass destruction and the downside of science, but in terms of water, 82% of available surface water in countries of West Asia originates in neighbouring countries. Without a regional perception it is hard to imagine any progress. I speak with a somewhat parched voice because our region has about 4.5% of the globe’s population, but only 0.62% of its fresh water resources. The Arab region’s water share is 1,026 cu. m. per capita compared to a global figure of 7,140 cu. m. I go back to that all-important extra-national thinking. Can education become extra-national before becoming global? How do we develop this important cluster not only of oil and water but the human environment? How do we find human solutions to human challenges?

Hazel Henderson
I will now ask Professor van Ginkel to close the discussion with his comments.

Hans van Ginkel
Let me first focus on the interrelation between education and globalisation. A lot of things have been said about this, although they have not been targeted very precisely. The role of globalisation for education is overall an increase of opportunities for education to be education of a high level, bringing together knowledge from the whole world by networking and the distribution of information between different countries and universities. I think co-operation between universities world-wide is something to strive for. Too many universities are following only two lines - either co-operation within their own region, or co-operation sometimes with universities in other regions abroad as part of study-abroad programmes, but not entering into joint activities to improve quality on both sides. The shrinking distances and increased interaction have given education better chances.

The other side is what education can do in relation to globalisation, which is maybe even more important. Globalisation has affected the political and economic sphere to a great extent. But when one discusses the opposite trends, globalisation and localisation, much of the social and cultural effect is in the direction of localisation, whereas the political and economic effect is in the globalisation direction. It is fairly difficult to match the two processes in a harmonious combination. In education one should therefore be seeking to learn about the other. It exists in primary and secondary education already, but it starts in pre-primary education, to learn to look out at the other.

However, in terms of the political and economic sphere of globalisation, many fail to realise that economy is a man-made system. Many regard the economic system and its present outcomes as more of a natural disaster. There is no realisation that we only have to change a few rules of the game to make the whole system work differently. This is where I think education comes in, to enable people to think about how these things are organised and how they should be organised and through it globalisation can gain a human face.

This knowledge and information have to be transferred, not just at university, but throughout life. And I think we have to be careful to not equate education with higher education. But when we take into account the social and cultural aspects, the need to understand the other, as well as globalisation and the system as it works, then we are talking about an education for democracy, because people that have been educated are citizens equipped to influence the outcome of the political process in a democracy. Many people end up in the technical sciences because they give a certainty that through that type of education you will be able to do this and that. But don’t overestimate it; we know of many excellent materials and procedures developed by engineering scientists that after all turned out to be fairly negative. We just have to think of asbestos, which for a long time was viewed as one of the best materials you could have. Now we don’t know how to get rid of it. There are many examples of where there is an undue element of certainty related to engineering and natural sciences. Social sciences have to target a moving target. This is a point not well recognised in this field - namely, what is entailed when you try to focus on a moving target and identify the driving forces behind the changes in that target, so that you have to re-configure social sciences in order to address social problems properly. As Professor Max-Neef said it is not just about description and explanation, it is about understanding and wisdom also; many of the sciences and humanities do contribute to wisdom and understanding, and help people to make a choice in life. It’s probably a wrong idea to think of science and universities as sources of definite answers. But there are many improvements we can make in the years to come.

I would like to say about multicultural societies that there is a mystification about them. Can one speak of a multicultural society in a country where the laws are only printed in the national language? The different groups may have their schools in their own language, but expect to attain the highest positions in society. That cannot be. Third-generation children should naturally know about their roots, their family origins, etc., but they will always have to accommodate for that society, unless the society is that willing to change its customs and have their official journal in many languages. Those who are in favour of a multicultural society are prone to shooting themselves in the foot when asking for all possible multicultural opportunities in one country. The local situation is analogous of a world made up of many diverse cultures. People come from different backgrounds, have different cultures, participate in political processes in different ways, but at the end of the day they have to live together be it in one country, one region and ultimately in one world.

I would like to answer Mr Singh’s comments about what the UN University should do. We do a lot of things. For instance, two weeks from now we will have a global ethos conference, where we will address these questions about common human values - particularity and universality of values in many different practical topics, not just in relation to bio-technology, but also in respect of international relations. We don’t talk often enough about common values in the field of international relations. Beyond that, in dialogue of civilisations we are really going into this element of promoting dialogue and understanding different civilisations. I think Prince Hassan was quite right when he said we are often not very well education for dialogue. I’ve come to the conclusion that most of us have been educated for debate, and debate is about argument, counter-argument, winning the argument, whereas dialogue is not about winning, dialogue is about understanding the other. And probably listening is more important than speaking, when it comes to dialogue, when you really want to understand the other. This morning, mention was made of human scale, and the same goes for understanding different civilisation; many of us have been educated in learning and understanding our own civilisations, but learning and understanding different civilisations is a different way of looking at the world. And the future world citizen in a culturally diverse world will really need to know more about different civilisations. In order to do that, there will be an increased need to look more closely at the whole relationship of education to the dialogue between civilisations; science and the dialogue between civilisations; and the dialogue between civilisations in terms of ethics, communications, the media, etc. That’s a fairly long list; maybe in some future conference we could deal with some of it.

Hazel Henderson
I think that was a good note to close on. It will help us reflect on the idea of a world culture of toleration and diversity. Hopefully we can get to savouring diversity in the same way we savour each other’s food, each other’s art, and each other’s music. For me this has always been a vision. So I want to thank everybody very much, and particularly our two distinguished speakers, thank you!