Development Education

Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD)

Summer School: "Social, Cultural and Economic Aspects of Education in Conflict"

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

The Academic Council of the United Nations System (ACUNS), Bonn

Development Education and the Rediscovery

of our Humanity

Coordinator: Felipe Revollo Ph.D. M.Sc. (DERN, NUI, Irish Aid, Ireland)

Emma Ruiz Ph.D. (CUCSH, University of Guadalajara, Mexico)

Laura Patricia Cruz Ruiz B.A. (CONACYT- CIBIOGEM , Mexico)

Luiz Carlos Ceriotti Bombassaro Ph.D. (UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brasil)

María Christina de S. Campos Ph.D. (Sao Paulo University, Brasil)

María Cecilia Plested Álvarez Ph.D. (GITT, University of Antioquia, Colombia)

"The simple idea that our differences are more important than our common humanity... When the human genome was sequenced... the most interesting thing to me as a non-scientist was the discovery that human beings with their three billion genomes are 99.9 percent identical genetically. So if you look around this vast crowd today, at the military caps and the baseball caps and the cowboy hats and the turbans, if you look at all the different colors of skin, all the heights, all the widths, all the everything, it's all rooted in one-tenth of one percent of our genetic make-up. Don't you think it's interesting that not just people you find appalling, but all the rest of us, spend 90 percent of our lives thinking about that one-tenth of one percent?1]

B. Clinton, Harvard College Class Day 2007.

The international discussion on socio-political and economic "development" has indirectly reinforced the division between poor and rich, between Developing Countries and Developed Countries and between countries of the South and countries of the North. This is because this discussion defines a series of concepts and parameters which over-emphasize the differences and divisions between different societies, cultures and religions in the world, while forgetting to emphasize their similarities.

Ironically, technology has not helped. Thanks to its advancement, we can easily connect trade with and travel to even the most abandoned regions of the world. The impact of technology has been greatest in Europe where electronic networks and the use of an international language (English) have increased connectivity, where border treaties, economic and currency economic integration have led to the increase of trade and travel. Apparently Europe and more generally the planet, has been transformed into a smaller place to live.

In spite of this, it seems that not only do we lack understanding towards each other, we do not even seem to want to understand each other.

Why else would we highlight those features and elements that make us different and opposed to each other?

Some people might argue that the latter is the result of the dominance of a Western, expansive neo-liberal power, most evident in the "War on Terror" which has deepened the differences between races and religions and awakened and radicalized old regionalist and nationalist movements as an apparent defence mechanism for guaranteeing cultural survival.

It is also worth considering whether these reactions might may also have been caused by a growing global fear of anything considered to be "external" or, according to Umberto Eco, a threat due to the inability to promote an intercultural dialogue that recognizes what really unites us behind the facade of others' symbols and colours: our humanity!

Increasing political and religious manipulation, along with the international media sensationalism and distortion of information after the events of 9/11 have generated more uncertainty, a collective impotence and a kind of global fear of anything called "multicultural" which would falsely seem to justify the presence of cultural authorities who decide publicly what is good, bad or simply different and opposed to the local context.

Worst of all is that this kind of cultural censorship has expanded so rapidly in every corner of the world that today it seems to be a natural part of life, with citizens passively accepting that even certain cultural elements and symbols such as veils, crosses and books are "logically" banned because of the danger that they supposedly represent. As Günter Grass stated at the beginning of the new millennium: "We know that the desire to destroy a hated book is still (or once more) part of the spirit of our times and that when necessary it finds appropriate telegenic expression and therefore a mass audience. What is much worse, however, is that the persecution of writers, including the threat of murder and murder itself, is on the rise throughout the world, so much so that the world has grown accustomed to the terror of it."[2]

In order to confront the above, it is necessary to emphasize that in the field of Development Education no cultural gatekeepers or propagators of a culture of fear exist, but rather promoters of dialogue who are sensitive and open to the search for what is common and that which unites.

Individual characteristics, cultural roots and identity should not be considered as fixed and static obstacles to dialogue, but rather as elements which are defined by a number of factors (age, sex, language, religion, culture, etc.) through which every person and society are in a permanent process of construction and deconstruction.

It is even more problematic when individuals concentrate only on a single aspect that dominates the personality of others, thus creating divisions and conflicts leading to the justification of use and abuse of certain common words in the Western world revealing - once again - the absence of dialogue and cultural exchange. As Prof. Ghassan Salamé stated at the international Davos Annual Meeting 2004: "I'm not happy neither with the word respect nor tolerance. I'm not happy with respect because in the concept of respect you do recognize the other's otherness, but you somehow establish cold war with him and because you establish a code of conduct where you don't trespass his domain and you invite him not to trespass your domain. So respect is only a form of political correctness. I'm not happy with tolerance either because in tolerance you implicitly recognize the balance of forces between you and the other. You say that between you and me there is a strong and there is a weak. The weak recognizes the balance of forces and recognizes who is strong and who is weak. The strong tolerates as well that there is a weak and that this weak should survive beside him. To manage our differences neither respect nor tolerance is the central concept, but dialogue"[3].

The great dilemma of post modernity, and particularly for the supporters of a Western development model, is that development has only been measured in quantitative terms and is based on the sole assumption that accelerating the forces of the market is enough to allow people (called "consumers") to live in peace and harmony. While being exposed to amazing technological advances, massive industrial growth and miraculous scientific discoveries, the importance of nurturing human relationships and living in community has been forgotten.

Modern man "has brought this whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success. He has produced machines that think and instruments that peer into the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space. He has built gigantic bridges to span the seas and gargantuan buildings to kiss the skies. His airplanes and spaceships have dwarfed distance, placed time in chains, and carved highways through the stratosphere... Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers"[4].

Development Education today holds the great promise of promoting the "sense of humanity" starting with Third Level institutions in which science has often been exploited to justify in a "rational and scientific" way, with the help of anthropometry, craniometry, phrenology, physiognomy and other disciplines, the division between "upper cultures" and "lower cultures", between those called "civilized" and those called "sub humans".

Of course, the search of what is and what makes us human has not always been an easy task. For centuries, education has been seen by the elites and ruling classes as a powerful tool which has helped to nurture and disseminate a series of prejudices and stereotypes about different races and ethnic groups in order to maintain the status quo, especially in the old colonies of the South, or to justify slavery, racism, apartheid and the Holocaust.

In this regard, a system of beliefs and mindsets are still being articulated worldwide, spreading a kind of cultural poverty which highlights differences and maintains political and economical dependencies. For example, last year in October, Dr. James Watson, Nobel prize winner in 1962 for his participation in the discovery of the structure of DNA was quoted as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really"[5].

Similarly, a couple of months ago, Dr. Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and Dr. Tatu Vanhanen, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland, stated that the differences in national income (per capita gross domestic product) correlate with differences in the average national intelligence quotient (IQ)[6], which not only suggests a certain type of cultural mental retardation, but at the same time seems to confirm a kind of racial incapacity in some less advantaged societies to solve their own socioeconomic problems or to reduce their high levels of poverty thus justifying immediate help from the most developed countries of the world.

Unfortunately, in many industrialized countries the history and processes of change that preceded the current levels of economic growth and development have been forgotten. Indeed, it is often incorrectly believed that development is an exclusive privilege of few nations and that this privilege has accompanied these societies since times immemorial. Therefore, Development Education should not only have the knowledge and understanding of the realities and stories of others as one of its main objectives, but also the knowledge and understanding of those realities and stories which are part of its own local situation in order to be aware that in its own tragedies and dramas of the past and the present we share exactly the same nakedness of our humanity with other people. As Gabriel García Márquez points out: "Venerable Europe would perhaps be more perceptive if it tried to see us in its own past. If only it recalled that London took three hundred years to build its first city wall, and three hundred years more to acquire a bishop; that Rome labored in a gloom of uncertainty for twenty centuries, until an Etruscan King anchored it in history; and that the peaceful Swiss of today, who feast us with their mild cheeses and apathetic watches, bloodied Europe as soldiers of fortune, as late as the Sixteenth Century. Even at the height of the Renaissance, twelve thousand lansquenets in the pay of the imperial armies sacked and devastated Rome and put eight thousand of its inhabitants to the sword"[7].

The focus on emphasizing the major problems currently affecting Developing Countries coupled with an extremely paternalistic attitude has led to the point of contemplating such large crowds of "poor of the South" as moving like hungry ants to the North as a kind of second-class individual, or as faceless numbers that fill annual statistics reports. Unfortunately, centuries of colonial history, neo-colonial mentality and practice along with the conception of racial superiority and Western cultural dominance (even through formal educational processes!) have generated a dehumanizing attitude towards the so called ‘Third World' and the belief that it represents a real threat to the civilized world. As Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of the UNESCO noted at the Dakar Conference in April 2000: "Education has neither always nor everywhere been used to free people from the bonds of ignorance. It has also served, and continues to serve, to buttress the powers that be, to generate exclusion and violence, and sometimes, as we are bound to recognize, to fan the flames of conflict"[8].

Undoubtedly, the most important human right of all and therefore the first to be promoted and defended is the right to be considered a human. Without this first condition it will be difficult or almost impossible to guarantee that the same rights

will be respected for all people in our global society.

Final Thoughts

Development Education aims to help people understand and become aware of the world and their interdependencies, while at the same time helping to connect people through the shared elements of our humanity, all the while promoting social engagement which "infers mutual listening, reciprocity and dialogue ... focused on something beyond the self"[9].

Of course, it is good to discover and understand the cultural and socio-economic differences between individuals, nations and regions of the world. At the same time it is important not to focus and concentrate too much on these differences in order to avoid any distortion, division and polarization of reality.

Development Education should promote this sense of humanity, highlighting the fact that that which unites us as human beings is much more than that which divides us.

It may be remembered that academic centers and international personalities have manipulated the research findings in the past, and continue to do so today, to suggest and to justify a kind of cultural and racial inferiority with some supposedly logical assumptions or rational arguments. Even the word development has been technically and intentionally used as a standard by which the West measures the non-West[10] and for which "the very act of measurement contributes to the perpetuation of oppression"[11].

Therefore, Development Education at Third Level has this great historical opportunity, and also a social responsibility to restore the "universal" sense and meaning in which universities were originally created and founded, and to help them to recover their leading role in community as the creators and disseminators of knowledge to the service of humanity.

Although modern universities tend toward the marketisation of education, super specialization of research, divinization of rationality and promotion of competitive practices, today more than ever the need for the mainstreaming of Development Education at Third Level is justified to promote a more interdisciplinary and holistic knowledge that aspires to "cultivate humanity, producing well educated citizens of the world who are able to place the needs of all humanity above their particular loyalties of nationality, religion, ethnicity, gender and class"[12].

Finally, teachers, lecturers and specialists in the field of Development Education especially from Developed Countries should formulate the following questions before selecting the most appropriate content and innovative programs, curriculum and methodologies:

a) Should our best minds be dedicated to understanding and solving our biggest human problems worldwide?

b) Are we human enough to think, reflect and talk about humanity or to feel responsible for the life of others?

c) How can we transmit and stimulate the sense of humanity in our students and in their actions through educational processes?

Of course, these are not rhetorical questions ... these are practical and ethical ones that should be addressed urgently because "30 years from now...our students will judge themselves not on their professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well they have addressed the world's deepest inequities ... on how well they treated people a world away who have nothing in common with them but their humanity. From those to whom much is given, much is expected"[13].

References

BOLAND, Josephine and McILRATH? ? : "The Process of Localizing Pedagogies for Civic Engagement in Ireland: The Significance of Conceptions, Culture and Context", Higher Education and Civic Engagement: International Perspectives, Chapter 7, p. 84, Wiltshire, Great Britain 2007.

BOURN, Douglas: "Development Education in the Era of Globalization", Police & Practice, A Development Education Review, Issue 1, Reflections and Projections, Centre for Global Education, Impression Print and Design NI Ltd, p. 55, Lisburn, Northern Ireland 2005.

CLINTON, Bill. Harvard College Class Day 2007, Harvard Yard, USA 2007:

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/06.07/99-clinton.html

CUTTLER, Howard: "The Art of Happiness", Coronet Books, p. 121, London, England 1999.

ESTREMADORO, Winston: "Un País Alucinante", Newspaper "Los Tiempos", 21st December 2007. Cochabamba, Bolivia:

http://www.lostiempos.com/noticias/21-12-07/21_12_07_pv5.php

GALEANO, Eduardo: "To Be Like Them", Siglo Veintiuno Editores, May 1991:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=1599

GARCIA MARQUEZ, Gabriel:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1982/marquez-lecture-e.html

GATES, Bill: "Harvard Commencement". USA, June 7, 2007:

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/06.14/99-gates.html

GRASS, Günter:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1999/grass-lecture.html

KHOO, Su -Ming, Dialogs. Galway, Republic of Ireland 2008.

KING, Martin. Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-lecture.html

LYNN, Richard. Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Ulster:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations

MATSUURA, Koïchiro. Director-General of the UNESCO:

http://www.unesco.org/education/wef/en-news/coverage_speech_jihiro.shtm

MENCHU, Rigoberta.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1992/tum-lecture.html

NUSSBAUM, Martha: "Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education", Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA 1997.

O' SHEA, John: "The Tragedy that is the Third World" (Seminar). Siobhán McKenna ? ? Theatre. NUI Galway, February 21, 2008:

http://nuigalwaycki.ie/News_Item.asp?News_ID=74

PAZ, Octavio: Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1990:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1990/paz-lecture-e.html

REVOLLO FERNANDEZ, Carlos Felipe: "Bildungspolitiken in Kamp gegen die Intergenerationelle und Interkulturelle Reproduktion der Armut in Indigenen Gruppen in Bolivien", Technical University Dresden, p. 89, Dresden, Germany 2005 (in reference to KOOLHASS, Rem: Singapore Sonlines, Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa, 2003)

SALAME, Ghassan. Davos Annual Meeting 2004:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=l9MdWGGjG6U

STOREY, Andy: Measuring Development", From the Local to the Global, Pluto Press, pp. 25-40, London, England 2003 (see also SARDAR, Z.: "Development and the Locations of Eurocentrism" in Munck and O'Hearn, Critical Development Theory).

SUSSER, Ida: "Women and AIDS in Africa: Strategies for Hope", The Graduate Center, University of New York:

http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/folio/spring2003/Africa.htm

UNAIDS, "2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic", Chapter 9: The Essential Role of Civil Society, p. 205: http://www.unaids.org/en/KnowledgeCentre/HIVData/GlobalReport/Default.asp

VER BEEK, Kurt Alan: "Spirituality: A Development Taboo", p. 61, London, England 2000.

[4] Martin Luther King. Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964:

[9] BOLAND, Josephine and McILRATH? ? : "The Process of Localizing Pedagogies for Civic Engagement in Ireland: The Significance of Conceptions, Culture and Context", Higher Education and Civic Engagement: International Perspectives, Chapter 7, p. 84, Wiltshire, Great Britain 2007.

[10] STOREY, Andy: Measuring Development", From the Local to the Global, Pluto Press, pp. 25-40, London, England 2003 (see also SARDAR, Z.: "Development and the Locations of Eurocentrism" in Munck and O'Hearn, Critical Development Theory).

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