1 2 Salvador Cardús – Laia Carol Walter Feinberg - Eric Hanushek Blanca Heredia - José Antonio Marina Artur Moseguí - Sergio Rizzo Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff - Elisa Soler Gian Antonio Stella LABYRINTHS Award Catalunya Literària Fundació Privada Convened in 2009 BIBLIOTECA DIVULGARE 3 FREE SAMPLE Edition for free circulation Biblioteca Divulgare - 2010 All rights reserved by Catalunya Literària Fundació Privada Rambla Nova 106-bis 7º 4ª - 43001 Tarragona No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of the copyright owner. Cataloguing Publication Data: T-1540-2010 4 LITERARY ESSAY AWARD DESEMBER 2009 SPONSORS Catalunya Literària Fundació Privada [email protected] Fondazione Etruria [email protected] Fondation Europa Cultural [email protected] Many thanks to the members of the jury that conceded this award for their disinterested collaboration. Mr Marcel Banús. For Catalunya Literària F.P. Mr Giovanni Panagia. For Fondation Europa Cultural Ms Elena Pezzi. For Fondazione Etruria 5 LABYRINTHS First Part. The educational Labyrinth Pages Introduction 9-11 Salvador Cardús (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) 1. The cultural value of education 13-36 Salvador Cardús 2. Education for development 37-55 Blanca Heredia (Organization for Economic Co-operatión and Development, OECD) 3. The importance of quality in education 57-91 Eric Hanushek (Stanford University) 4. Family and education 93-113 José Antonio Marina (Madrid) 5. The place of religious schools in democratic societies 115-147 Walter Feinberg (University of Illinois) 6. The religious labyrinth 149-167 Laia Carol (Barcelona) Editor’s Note 169-175 7. Chart of Religions 176-190 Laia Carol (Barcelona) Second Part. The ethnic and socio-political Labyrinth 8. Ethnic Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 193-218 Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff (University of Geneva, Switzerland) Editor’s Note 220-229 9. Over-population and its diversity 231-264 Artur Moseguí i Gil - Elisa Soler (Barcelona) Editor’s Note 265-266 10. The political class 267-301 Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella (Il Corriere della Sera) Editor’s Note 302-308 Bibliography 309-322 6 FIRST PART EDUCATIONAL LABYRINTH 7 8 Introduction The chapters in the first part of this work show the ambition of the goals and obstacles that education is currently facing. The second part takes a look at the results of the education that has been given. On one hand, the importance and value of education is often stressed publicly, with the social demand for training increasing. In fact, in a great part of countries, schooling has been generalized with the incorporation of women and the working classes. But, as I indicate in my chapter, “information” and “knowledge” are two terms that are still very often mistaken, and there is a lot of confusion surrounding the role of the different social actors and institutions playing a part in the orientation of education. The different studies presented here raise the problems that derive from the diversity of educational agents and the models coming into conflict they imply. I also show how the crisis of the educational function of the family structure is inadequate to approach the challenges facing the current world. From a global perspective of education’s social function, the following question is raised: Who should educate parents? Both parents and teachers are saturated with the activities of their respective vital roles. The answer cannot be other than the fatherhood and motherhood learning process must occur in the student age, esentially through the example of their behaviour within the family and the classrooms. On the other hand, schools have been creating more and more ambitious expectations, not only aspiring to pass on knowledge, but also aiming to shape the attitudes and values, the emotions and social criticism. However, on a practical level, a renunciation of the will to progress can be perceived, which entails the renuncuation of the confidence in rationality and scientific knowledge obtained in a long fight against obscurantism. In her review of the comparative international studies, Blanca Heredia emphasizes that the internationally accepted aim to achieve education for all, together with its positive effects on development and welfare, are far from being accessible in many underdeveloped countries and will be hard to achieve given the world’s current economical and political structures. Eric Hanushek also addresses this issue in his extended chapter along with the importance of education 9 which is not only based on its quantity, but on its quality, that is, in what is learned, which learning techniques are used and what results the students obtain. And both in their positions, Blanca Heredia in OECD and PISA, and Hanushek in his teaching experience and his obsessive focus on gaging the impact of education as an evolutionary economical factor, insisting on the methods for studying the influence of this education not only on the development of general civilization, but also acting upon the tangible issues of production and personal, collective, cultural and economical productivity. Walter Feinberg and Laia Carol tackle the obstacle of religion. From the values of a liberal democracy, they argue that the parents’ preference for a religious education for their children, if it exists, must be restricted both by the autonomous interest of the children and the liberal democratic society’s interest in equity. A democratic government is obliged to discriminate in favour of schools which have an explicit interest in promoting autonomy, equity and fraternity. The right to educate one’s own children within a liberal society should be considered a public right that is granted to parents only when certain conditions are met, not in an absolute way. Governments must discriminate favouring public schools and those private or religious schools which promote values of autonomy, equity, and fraternity. The disctinction between teaching and training is crucial in order to shape an educational process for the future, as is stressed in various chapters. The technological advances made in the teaching field allow giving priority to training tasks. Specifically, that which flows through the web and is freely accessible, should no longer be using up teaching time inside classrooms. The existing shortcomings in education show that the two widely accepted goals of expanding access to schools and improving its quality are difficult to combine. Hanushek warns that if the governments’ policies simply pretend to force youngsters to remain in schools longer, without changing the fundamental qualitative aspects of schools, the general goals of development, welfare and civilization which are usually associated with education shall not be achieved. Among the short-term reforms, I personally propose communication plans that regulate the internal and external communication flows between families, schools and the rest of institutions that contribute to education. 10 José Antonio Marina notices we live in a circle of excuses, in which parents accuse schools of being inefficient, schools complain about parents sending their kids without the adequate courtesy. Then they all agree and put the blame on television and, lastly, the complaints are directed towards the government, that usually changes the law, and the cicle begins again. In order to break this “hideous circle”, according to Marina, everyone must try to act from their scope of possibilities. Thus, he proposes a civic agreement on education as a previous step for a state agreement on education. Collectively, the different chapters on the labyrinth of education presented in this work indicate the shortcomings of education in the current world and identify the main obstacles to its progress. Likewise, they propose some basic lines of collective action to advance towards a generalized education, understood as teaching and training, which is worthy of the project and of the possibility of culminating the civilizing evolution of mankind. Education needs to adapt to the characteristics of each human group. Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff introduces an idea of classifying human diversity which should be considered. Artur Mosegui and Elisa Soler do something similar with regard to the number of human beings the Earth can shelter, sharing Malthus’ idea, which is more valid today than when it was first envisaged. And finally Jean Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo synthesize the consequence of an inappropriate education that hinders the socio-political evolution of the species. Salvador Cardús Barcelona, 2009 11 12 1 The cultural value of education Salvador Cardús i Ros (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) In order to avoid turning a text about “the value of education” into a trivial exercise that merely reiterates the topics we associate with our acclaimed society of knowledge —as some like to name it in a rather pedantic way—, we need to make an issue of the wording. In other words, we need to analyze the weak point that explains why defending the value of education is still necessary. And I believe the best way of doing it is by displaying a paradox that has been discovered with astonishment in recent years within the western advanced societies: although the importance and value of education had never been publicly defended with such vehemence, at the same time we one could say that the individual adhesion to the promises offered by this education had never reached such low levels. Indeed, the objective demand for more and