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by Ana Lucy Bengochea | 0 votes | 
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Andries Botha: Thanks for the question, Bill. You know this idea of creating the expectation that comes from a decent education must also go hand in hand with the idea that that education can be realized within a productive and yielding economy. And that that education can find a place [in it]. Because I know many societies that have got a reasonable education system but a completely non-productive economic system. Which means that the education that people have renders them incapable of being sufficiently innovative to change, transform, a moribund social structure which they cannot economically participate in, and that leads to an enormous amount of frustration. So to be concrete, I think we need to continue lobbying government to reprioritize their budgets; to prioritize education, as well as an ongoing investigation relative to that society, as to how that education needs to be shaped in order to meet the demands, and also to create the demands, in its economic and work situation. |
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Currently video only.
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by Angaangaq Lyberth | 0 votes |
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Angaangaq Lyberth: Answertext will be available soon. |
Anthony Arnove: I think the starting point of discussing this question is to assert that education needs to be a universal free public right. And that the starting point has to be that education is the priority and is a universal right that we will not accept any restriction on. And unfortunately, today, we are far from living in a world that has provided universal education. Increasingly, we see not only the fact that many people are denied access to basic education, but more and more education is determined on the basis of whether or not one can afford an education, that is education is determined by class, education is determined by existing privileges, power, and inequality, and that education is reinforcing those injustices in those inequalities. So, if we want to fight for education to be a mechanism for creating the possibility of everyone contributing to the world, everyone participating in the world, we have to challenge the economic basis of education today. Education in the United States is based on property, taxes, which means that rich communities have schools with far greater resources than poor communities. That inequality, which Jonathan Kozol has described in his books with such eloquence is fundamentally unacceptable, and so we will have to adjust those property and economic relationships first. |
Anuradha Koirala: Compulsory and free education should be provided for a decent life. |
Anuradha Mittal: Bill, actually I would ask you how you would define decent education. What is decent education? And, Bill, I would ask you to define what does contribution really look like? Is it something that is just something relevant when you can put a dollar value to it? It is something which goes into the public offering, or how do we define that because I can think of a lot of people who might not have gone to the school but they have made a contribution. Again, I am thinking of the people of Plachimada in Kerala, who might not have had some Ivy League university education, but they have stood up and taught the rest of the world how you fight a corporation that’s trying to take away your water. So for me, the question is really I need to understand what you mean by contribution and a decent education. |
Ashok Gangadean: I think this is a great question and just one that our World Wisdom Council is deeply concerned with. And what’s important is to see that the great disparities on the planet today that we experience of the haves and the have nots. Of the wealthy and the extreme poverty of people and the unjust distribution of available technologies for example, and opportunities for education. All of these are symptoms of a girl’s distortion which comes from an ego based culture, that objectifies ourselves in each other and objectify other cultures and other worlds and has led to this gross disparity. And if you want to have a world that’s truly equal opportunity, in which every human being has a chance as a sacred human in this interconnected field of humanity as one human family, to have the opportunity and the reality of having a proper human upbringing with the full sacred rights of being a human being, as a sacred human being. What kind of culture would it take to have that happen? An awakened culture based upon global consciousness and global spirituality in which we care for one another and take care of our human family. In that setting, every child will then have the opportunity to be raised as a sacred being. To realize her full potential. To have the opportunities of eduction and parenting and to become a human being. And our parenting and our school systems, our school systems will be responsive to holding space for sacred beings to be educated in integral whole ways to become whole human beings. That’s the kind of world we look for and the new kind of education and the new kind of culture. |
Audrey Kitagawa: First of all, I think we need to make education a priority and to ensure that we commit our funds towards education and to be able to understand that education is a way for children to be able to grow beyond their own worlds, to embrace other worlds, to develop those skills that will help them to be able to move in the world in ways that their lives can be enhanced with better information, better knowledge, to understand math, science, reading, and to be able to utilize modern technologies. These are all opportunities that children must be provided so that they would be able to also understand what it means to have the value of information and education. It is really an avenue for children to be able to grow. And I remember when I went to college, my mother said to me that education is the one thing that no one can ever take away from you, so having received an education is yours, but education is not something that ever stops. We learn and grow every day that we live, but there is a level at which we ought to [audio ends]. |
Avi Primor: I believe the answer to this question is obvious and I do not want to repeat what probably most of the people here will say. I would like to chose a certain perspective. I believe that the children all over the world should be taught history from the same or at least compareable history books. Even though we live in a modern world, the problem nowadays still is that children in different countries and different societies are taught history in different ways. We do learn the same facts, but with different interpretations. And this creates prejudices. I give you a very simple example. In Germany you learn a lot about history, and one chapter in the books is about emigration of nations. In France, you learn about this topic as well, but under the title invasion of the barbarians. The same history. But here it is emigration of nations, and there it is invasion of the barbarians. The facts are the same, the interpretation is completely different. There are thousands of examples for this. And those differences are responsible for us still having stereotypes, having prejudices. I believe that we all should stick to our ways of learning history, our respective national histories, but as well the history of other countries, to be able to see it propotionally... by Avi Primor |
Benjamin Fahrer: We can channel the resources available to educational systems. We can begin to honor teachers as valuable contributors to our society. Once we channel the right resources and give knowledge and value to the people that are the actual promoters of education and teachers of this education. We’ll start to see some change. There probably is many steps to take, as far as the concrete steps to take, I hope that these steps are -- actually come out of this discussion because really to give a greater opportunity and search out to realize that they have something to contribute to the world then as it go on, that happens. Make the education accessible to all, the resources available, accessibility, and value to the teachers. People want to be teachers, they want to be students; students are teachers, teachers are students. |
Benson Venegas: I think I mention this at the early morning today. That first we have to prepare people the challenge to really have education system in the context of a post-modern society. Where we need to create the synergy between the old traditional values and the new values that we would acquire as a global community. On the other hand, we need to prepare people to be actively successful into a global economy. And this is very key, because in our rural communities we see that twenty percent of the population they really go back to the farming, to the land, twenty percent of the people migrating, and the other sixty percent are the one that stays there in a stage where they're trying to find what they - how can they really interact or get in a better process of development. So, we have a challenge. And the challenge is also that we need also to bring diversity of learning, diversity of knowledge, diversity of experience into our educational process, to be able - to bring decency in our education where it base more not on the perspective of a dominant culture, but on the base of a diversity. A diversity of expressions. A diversity of opinions, of perspective in our classroom. And lastly and not - and very important, but not the least, is to create more equity conditions for education, to be more fair - people to have fair access to education. |
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Currently video only.
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by Bianca Jagger | 0 votes |
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Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon. |
Bora Cosic: It is still a long way to the equality in education. As millions of the people are dying of hunger it’s difficult to imagine that kids out of these corners of the world are getting anything from the big bank of world’s knowledge. Bred and book should be given to them in parallel. by Bora Cosic |
Brian J. Weller: Okay, good question, Bill. Concrete steps, okay, so we can do this. Create a universal interactive educational program that helps you to learn how to learn. Learning how to learn is a great art and I think we need to build that software and courseware based on really how the mind and memory and awareness works; taking our modeling if you like, modeling our courseware from neuroscience. Other concrete steps, learning about healthy living; nutrition, exercise, meditation. Another concrete step is to again model our educational software on how the natural world really works as a living system and our part in that. These are the kinds of steps. I think not only are you going to create an educational axis in our children, but really promote a safer world ultimately. So, those are some steps we could take. Let’s see, what else? Well, yes, how to communicate with nonviolence or through nonviolence. I will put that at the top of the list actually. The art of inquiry; the true art of inquiry. So these are the kinds of ingredients I’d like to see, helping each other find our true vocation in life, and that’s the other piece. So, make this worldwide curriculum available to all people. |
Catherine David: Maybe by being a bit less arrogant, a bit less simplistic, in not systematically provoking more poverty in the world, and once more I am very overwhelmed with the innocence of this question, which one? [] Obviously everyone can go to teach... Already to start by watching in front of his door and to note that the school system is not perfect, to note that a large and increasing amount of people don’t have access or have a bad access and begin to confront the question in a little more political manner, and I believe that the best way to let people access a question is not necessarily to bombard, is not necessarily to ostracize segments of the population therefore I find that this kind of extremely naive formulation comes unfortunately from the United States, a confirmation of the state of the world in which we are, it is indeed oppressive, of innocence and arrogance. |
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Currently video only.
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by China Keitetsi | 0 votes |
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China Keitetsi: Answertext will be available soon. |
Constantin von Barloewen: [...] However it must be taken into account that native traditions, mythologies, cosmologies from thousands of years of history, like in Africa or Latin America, where oral literature traditions flows into schooling and into education. The fact that we have an education, which is occupied exclusively with a future, which is no more future for humans, but also for the robots. I am for an education, which cares very strongly about the rootedness of humans and also in its traditions and with its authenticity in a still native world, which finds a balance between between tradition and modern trend, whereby the modernity should not be under-weighted, by any means, but she must be examined over her humanizing character, otherwise she cannot exist, otherwise she does not deserve to be lived. |
Cornel West: We were -- when we came to the world -- I think we have to try to exemplify the kind of democratic visions that we talk about. I think we have too many democratic movements without enough democratic personalities. The democratic personality understands democracy as a way of life and a mode of being. It’s not simply a system of governance; and for democracy to become a mode of life and a way of being, it means that we have to actually try to be the very thing that we espouse and most people would rather see sermons than hear sermons any day. And, to be a sermon is to try to be an exemplar, not perfect, but an exemplar of ways in which education, maturation, cultivation of self and soul can be made visible, palpable, discernible in the eyes of others. So, in that sense a decent education is not simply just schooling. It has to do with something much deeper. It has to do with what Keats called soul making, which is this courageous shaping of a self and remaking of a self, against circumstances usually not of one’s own choosing, but still circumstances that don’t trump the ability to be courageous and compassionate. by Cornel West |
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