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“A COMMUNITY-BASED EDUCATIONWITH AN INTERCULTURAL FOCUS”

Dr. MOHAMED CHTATOU

UNIVERSITY LECTURER

RABAT, MOROCCO

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2011

Of Globalization and Education:

It goes without saying that one of the major all-encompassing events of the last part of the secondmillennium was undoubtedly the advent ofglobalization, as a clear political expression of thetriumphing capitalism and market economy theories,following the end of the Cold War and the bi-polarization of the world. The concept ofglobalization, itself, was not something new tomankind, it was a dream nurtured over the centuries,by various thinkers and statesmen who failed to see itmaterialize in such a magnitude as is the case today.However, this hope was rekindled in modern times by athought crafted, that the rapid technological advancesachieved by humanity will ultimately result in theworld becoming a “planetary village”.

After the short-lived euphoria that followed thebirth of the globalization, soon fear and mistrustensued and many a nation saw in it Trojan horse forhegemony and control carefully and intelligentlymounted with the intention to impose a McWorld1 onhumanity at large. The diplomatic denunciation of thisconcept came from France that saw in this act anAnglo-Saxon drive to control the world andconsequently destroy progressively all other cultures,languages and civilizations. To thwart this veiledaggression on cultural values of humanity; the Frenchcalled on the world to respect the “other” and his

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culture2 and to defend it from the onslaught of theglobal uniformization.

Nowadays, however, the rejection of globalizationhas taken an unfortunate turn, for each internationalconference attended by the world main powers or G8meetings is marred by bouts of violent clashes betweenthe security forces of the host country and anti-globalization militants who congregate to the site ofthe meeting from all over the world. The last of thesesaw the death of the young Italian protester CarloGiuliani (23 years) in the city of Genoa where G8leaders were meeting lately in July 2001. According topolitical analysts and observers, these internationalevents are tuning more into occasions for thecelebration of anti-globalization than what they weremeant for in the first place.

The legitimate fear expressed by therejectionists of globalization worldwide, whetherpeaceful or violent, means that if this phenomenon isleft unchecked it will destroy everything around it ina flash, and especially vulnerable cultures with noeconomic strength. This may not be the ultimate reasonfor which globalization was set up for in the firstplace, but it is an outcome that has to be taken intoconsideration.

Globalization would not be seen today as anoverwhelming danger to humanity by many, if it werenot for its ability to stifle the local culturalexpression for the sake of uniformity at the globallevel.

Education, more than ever before, is solicitedtoday by everyone to prepare the individual to face

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the challenges of the future and the uncertainties oftomorrow with determination, responsibility and faith.To achieve this, education is called upon to display,in no doubtful terms, openness and flexibility towardswhat is different and unknown, with a view toachieving fully the overall objective of learning tolive together.

Learning to live together is an integral part ofthe ongoing life exercise of constructing meaning, forthere is no such a thing as absolute truth and itshould be emphasized that expressing the wish to livetogether involves much affectivity and a great deal ofemotions.

Education, to be relevant, has to help theindividual construct his own “structure of meaning” byhelping him and providing him with the necessary toolsfor building painstakingly his values, ethics,attitudes and behaviour as well as his own personalcode of morality, obviously in tune with that of hissociety, which will constitute his own natural baggagein life. As such, the individual is required to learnself-esteem and self-respect which are the basis foraccepting the “other” in his “otherness” and showingsolidarity, respect and empathy for him. Self-respectand self-esteem are the basic qualities that makecoexistence, cooperation, mutual understanding, andconflict resolution something achievable and possible.

Intolerance, hatred and rejection of the “other”by means of violence and/or ostracism are generallythe end result of ignorance and stereotyping. So,expressing the wish and the willingness to learn tolive together entails unequivocally knowledge.

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Armed wit knowledge, the individual pushesfurther daily the limits of fear and broadens thefield of mutual understanding and acceptance. And,likewise, investigates one’s strengths and weaknessesand learns to discover other people’s passions, fears,customs, beliefs, expectations, motivations, sufferingas well as needs and aspirations.

The learning process is a matter of faith inhumanity as a whole and faith in the individual, andthe desire to work together towards carrying out jointprojects and ultimately fulfilling common dreams andaspirations for a better future for everyone.

To achieve these lofty ideals and to give theeducation a new meaning and a new lease of life, thelearning process has to reach out to common values andcultural diversity to overcome ethnocentrictendencies.

For the sake of an education that mirrors cultural diversity:

In the last century, ignorance and its corollarythat is fear have been at the origin of much distrustand violence between individuals, communities andnations. This tendency cannot for the moment,unfortunately, be scratched out from the human psyche,but it can certainly be contained, by encouraginghuman beings through education to construct a commonmeaning, common objectives and aspirations and worktogether towards achieving them.

Likewise, tremendous progress has been gladlyachieved in our perception of education3: in theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, it was writtenin gold, for the first time, that education is an

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undeniable right of every human being. In 1990, at theWorld Conference on Education for All at Jomtien inThailand, this concept was further clarified andenriched, in the sense that every person ought tobenefit from a basic education which meets his basicneeds. Last but not least, at the World Forum onEducation in Dakar, Senegal (2000), emphasis was puton the objective of providing quality education forall human beings, by taking better stock of itscomplexity and this was stated clearly in the FinalReport of the World Forum on Education4:

“The movement toward more open anddemocratic societies has created a need forlearning that goes beyond the academiccurriculum and factual knowledge to emphasizeproblem-solving and open-ended enquiry. Theexpansion of communication and informationtechnologies necessitates more interactive andexplanatory forms of learning, and the increasedpace of change has put a premium on the needto engage in continuous learning over a lifetime.There is also a new urgency to ensure thateducation at all levels and in all places reinforcesa culture of peace, tolerance and respect forhuman rights”.

Education is not an isolated phenomenon withinsociety and within the lives, passions and experiencesof human beings. It is constantly in confrontationwith the hard realities of its environment at thelocal, national and global levels. So, it is dulyexpected to overcome numerous tensions, these havebeen identified by the report of the InternationalCommission on Education for the Twenty First Century5,

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three of which are of capital interest to workshop 3on the topic of : “Common Values, Cultural Diversityand Education: What and How to reach?”. These are asfollows:

- “The tension between the global and the local: people need gradually to become world citizenswithout loosing their roots and while continuingto play an active part in the life of their nationand their local community”;

- “The tension between the universal and the individual: culture is steadily being globalized,but as yet only partially. We cannot ignore thepromises of globalization nor its risks, not theleast of which is the risk of forgetting theunique character of human beings, it is for themto choose their own future and achieve their fullpotential within the carefully tended wealth oftheir traditions and their own cultures whichunless we are careful, can be endangered bycontemporary developments”;

- “The tension between tradition and modernity: howis it to adapt to change without turning one’sback on the past, how can autonomy be acquired incomplementarity with the free development ofothers and how can scientific progress beassimilated? This is the spirit in which thechallenges of the new information technologiesmust be met”.

The tensions stated here above sum up the state ofhumanity today, it is confronted to the reality oflearning to live together in the face of the

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unbearable pressure between belonging to a “worldculture” and supporting cultural diversity.

It is an established fact that the disseminationof cultural expressions, forms and experiences is asvital and important as social, political and economicmanifestations and processes6.

If today, globalization is raising fears withinsocieties worldwide, it is simply because it is seenas a destructive world phenomenon that is one way onlyand exclusively in the service of one language(English)7, one culture (Anglo-Saxon) and one market(America), which leads to the imposition of theMcWorld syndrome. And with this in place, culturaluniformization will become the norm and diversity theunacceptable exception or the world social taboo.

Essentially, the man of the present century has tohave deep roots in his own culture and civilizationand show, at the same time, a tremendous degree ofreceptiveness of the “others”.

To achieve this, he has to drop off hismisconceptions and fallacies about the “other” and his“otherness” and accept to understand his culture inits environment with its own rationale and salientfeatures tracing their origin in beliefs and variousaspects of material culture.

It is, also, a known fact among educators andanthropologists that slipping into a stereotype is assimple as breathing, but finding one’s way out of itis quite a task. It is likewise true that stereotypingis a prominent manifestation of our human weakness,but it is also and most importantly, a blatant and an

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unacceptable expression of our ignorance, presumptionand self-indulgence that verges on racism andegocentrism.

There is no such a thing as a good and/or superiorculture or stupid and/or culture, for theseunfortunate qualifiers are the reflection of self-adoration and self-love and infatuation.

Human beings of the twenty first century have tolearn to accept what is different or alien withhumility and that all cultures share in grandeur aswell as failings. What is important, though, isworking together with the “other” towards forging a“multicultural common identity” on a bedwork ofdiversity and common values and ethics.

To reach this noble objective in education andmove on with it to an all-inclusive new reality,several questions, all important and vital, imposethemselves at his juncture:

- What philosophy and approach to adopt in order toimprove educational output in the light ofcultural diversity and the development of newshared values?

- How can the community be implicated in aneducational effort aiming at establishingcomplementarity and interculturality in order tomake plurality a value enabling mankind “to learnto live together”?

Philosophy and Approach:

To achieve cultural diversity in education, it isimportant to adopt an attitude based on the idea ofreshaping vision. The new vision ought to be broad and

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creative or rather an “expanded vision” as stated inarticle 2 of the World Declaration on Education forAll8:

“To serve the basic learning needs of all requiresmore than a recommitment to basic education asit now exists. What is needed is an “expandedvision” that surpasses present resource levels,institutional structures, curricula, andconventional delivery systems while building onthe best in current practices”.

This entails broadening the scope and most importantlyenhancing the environment for learning and increasingthe potential of partnership. This is furtherhighlighted in the above-mentioned Declaration in thefollowing words9:

“The realization of an enormous potential forhuman progress and empowerment is contingentupon whether people can be enabled to acquirethe education and the start needed to tap into theever-expanding pool of relevant knowledge andthe new means for sharing this knowledge”.

Tapping into the pool of “relevant knowledge”presupposes that this knowledge has been identified,researched, studied and “digested”, or to be able toundertake this daunting and ambitious task properly,people have to fulfill the following conditions:

- Be receptive to other opinions, realities,experiences and approaches;

- Be open to other truths and philosophies; - Conceive of plurality and diversity in life and in

learning practices;

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- Overcome ethnocentric inclinations and socialarbitrariness;

- Adopt an intercultural attitude to the realitiesof the world;

- Seek complementarity and commonality betweenvisions that are opposed and contradictory;

- Instil curiosity and respect for “otherness” anddifference in future positive and responsiblesociety;

- Help build a world based on common concerns andshared values;

- Shape our dormant and boring diversity into anactive and electrifying experience enablingindividuals “to learn to live together”.

A curriculum for creative diversity:

In 1989, Jean Marie Domenach, a French philosopherand political and social scientist, published aninsightful book entitled: Ce qu’il faut enseigner (Whatshould be taught)10, which he devoted exclusively toeducational matters.

Domenach’s opinion is that societies today undergoincredible changes at great speed and so doeducational systems, but because they are moving atdifferent speeds in different directions, the gapbetween the two is widening alarmingly to the extentthat there is a profound malaise among teachers andanxiety among pupils who question the validity of thecurriculum taught.

Domenach’s advice is crystal clear, today’sschools must impart today’s knowledge, which issynonymous to sayingthat curriculum has to be in tunewith the expectations of society, on the one hand, and

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the world, on the other. In other words, societiesaround the world are gradually getting rid of theirmonolithic legacy of the past to become plural andmulticultural. So if Domenach’s view is adopted, theircurricula ought to become multicultural to avoidincongruity.

According to Giovanni Gozzer, an Italian renownededucator11, the world because of migrations andpopulation movements, has changed so much and with iteducation which is gladly taking a multiculturalcoloring:

“There is now an irreversible trend towardstranscending national frontiers, in both theeconomic and the cultural firlds (an to a certainextent as regards political, ethnic, linguistic,scientific and technological exchanges). Largecommunity groupings are now taking place inEurope, as well as emerging in other continents,breaking down not only the barriers of politicallyhomogeneous states, but also those of countriesaligned in other blocs with opposing ideologicaland military policies. The fact that this situationhas come to stay had an enormous impact on“teaching structures” (which seems a moreappropriate term than the increasinglyambiguous word “education”). Until recent timesthe theory that the content of school curricula wasa kind of automatic adjunct to the idea of thenation-state, similar to nationality, possession of apassport, a national language and a constitution,was admitted readily and without reservation.Today, this comparison seems less evident, notonly as a result of the existence of thecommunities and groupings already mentioned,

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but also because of the reciprocal influenceswhich economies, culture, and trade exert onindividual national groups”.

Because of this new reality created by migration and population movement all over theworld and especially in the West, many countries adapted their educational policies gradually to this new situation, by taking measures to bring in new players into the fold, such as international organizations, NGOs and community leaders. Curriculum must not, anymore, be centrally-imposed, as it is the case unfortunately in many developing countries, it has to be the result of a consensus , so that every ethnic or cultural group can identify with it. It has to be a sort of educational melting-pot that erases emotional borders, but takes in all cultural ingredients as a form of recognition of the cultural diversity of a given society.

And given, also, that societies are not anymore what they were in the past: monolithicin their composition and their aspirations, curriculum has to follow suit and attempt to reflect, as faithfully as possible, the needs of the people taking into consideration their language, their origin, their culture and mostof all their legitimate aspirations.

It is important, first and foremost, to identify the potential players needed today totake part in curriculum design, in its diverseand all-encompassing version:

- Traditional approach:

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government officials (curriculum departments ofministries of education);

educators; planners; Ideologues (partly officials in one-party system

countries (Communist bloc)).

This curriculum often had catastrophic results onthe learners, the educational system and developmentin general. It is so rigid and so uneducational thatit fails miserably, in the end, because of thefollowing mishaps:

- No field-testing undertaken prior to using thecurriculum, to determine its educational validity,if any;

- No attempt to encourage feed-back from educators,teachers, pupils and parents on the material andits educational content;

Educational

PartyIdeology

Economicplanningrestricti

Variousnon-

education

Sanitized,

conform

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- This curriculum does not reflect the culturaldiversity of the learner and, as a result, it doesnot enhance his spirit of creativity;

- This curriculum encourages school failure and thedrop-out syndrome;

- This curriculum develops authoritarianism insociety and non-democratic values.

- Modern approach:

no government officials, educators; community leaders; religious leaders; NGOs; International Organizations;

This final output can in no way be considered as a“sacred” output, it is constantly open to new ideasand new input. Therefore, its life expectancy ought tobe as short as possible to allow introduction of newideas and concepts.

Another important feature of the modern approach isthat is does not work towards transmitting informationto the learner. It strives to build his skills and toprepare him for action by exposing him to tried data,in mock situations, and allowing him to review anddiscuss, in his own manner, every aspect of it.

Now, to make curriculum a fruitful investment, itis important to implicate the parents, from the very

educational matter

Multicultural data

Field-testin

g

reviewing

Final output

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beginning, because their input is of vital importancefor the future success of their offspring.

Aware of the importance of this issue, the IslamicEducational Scientific and Cultural Organization –ISESCO- has published in the year 2000 a book entitledParental Education12 in its working languages Arabic,English and French, which it is in the process ofdistributing to the Member States. This publicationdeals with the different aspects of parentalsupervision of the education of their children andsuggestions to improve its impact and results.

All in all, parental education has to be takenmore seriously than what there is now, especially ifthere is interest in devising a relevant and quality-motivated curriculum, that takes into considerationthe multicultural concerns of the society at large.

Educational content and methodology:

Educators and teachers worldwide are always askingthe same relevant question, to which obviously thereis no easy answer:

What to teach and how to teach it?Obviously, if the traditional curriculum is

changed in favour of a new curriculum aiming atpositive diversity, new material has to be introduced,as well as, new players and a new approach.

Curricular Education:

In addition to the traditional subjects that haveshowed their relevance and effectiveness, in economicterms among the learners. The following subjects ought

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to be introduced in the new curriculum, if they hadnot been taught yet;

- Specific studies: Civic education; Health education; Environmental education; Population education; Human rights subjects; Nutrition education; Women’s studies; Ethnic studies; Community Development studies; Anti-racist education.- Cultural studies; - Urban anthropology / Cultural anthropology; - Comparative religion / religious studies; - Mother tongues; - Area studies; - International education13.

Extra-curricular education:

There is to be, also, interest given to extra-curricular learning as a vital supplement for“building the skills” of the learner rather than“stuffing his head with information”.

The objective of extra-curricular education is toput the skills acquired in school to use throughpersonal experience acquired in vivo.

The Americans, aware of the importance of extra-curricular knowledge, have, decades ago, introducedsuch courses in their educational system. Some ofthese are:

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- Volunteer work abroad : students go abroad to dovolunteer work for the benefit of nativepopulations in developing countries, where theyprovide help with development projects and learnthe language and the customs of the localpopulation in return;

- Semester abroad : students go to a foreign countryto study a given number of subjects for a semesterand write papers on their experience to theirschools;

- Gap-filling experience : before embarking onuniversity studies, students go abroad to teach asubject of their choice and learn other skills inreturn. This experience helps them broaden theirhorizons and see the world afterwards from adifferent perspective.

- Exchange programmes : students from differentcountries exchange their families for a culturalexperience;

- Semester at sea : students travel on a “floatinguniversity” around the world for a semester toimprove their educational skills, polish theirknowledge and discover the world.

If the content is modernized to take intoconsideration cultural diversity, then the methodologyhas also to undergo a similar operation. As such,teaching methods have to be reviewed to adapt to thenew reality.

The new methodology has to meet the followingprocedural requirement:

- Be relevant; - Be effective;

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- Be quality-oriented; - Be community-minded; - Be multiculturally-oriented; - Be skills-motivated.

And make use constantly of such tools as thefollowing:

- Evaluation techniques; - Feed-back; - One on one situations; - Field-testing.

Likewise, teachers and administrators have toundergo frequently in-service training, during whichthey will be exposed to the multicultural curriculumin different areas and to methods to approach it inthe classroom, highlighting the educational fact thatthe student is not anymore a passive element but anactive player who can have an important input in theeducational game.

Conclusion:

To the highly important question:“Can we conceive of diversity in school and in

curriculum in terms of complementarity rather thanopposition?”

The answer is “yes”: this is possible and feasibleprovided all the concerned players: governmentofficials, teachers, pupils, parents, NGOs andinternational organizations do engage seriously in acultural dialogue on the best way to makemulticultural education a reality in our schools andan enjoyable experience, too.

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The fact is that the idea of a “global village” is attractive to the majority of the inhabitants of this only inhabitable planet in the know universe, as of today. But, it is, also, an established truth that without cultural diversity this village will be a boring place and our life a tedious experience imposedon us.

There is an urgent need for human beings “to learn to live together” by accepting the “other” in his difference and “otherness” and overcoming our ethnocentric tendencies, jingoistic madness, racist foolishness and cultural selfishness in favour of a true multicultural society.

To achieve this noble ideal, the starting point is undoubtedly education. Through education, human beings can easily overcome their societies’ arbitrariness and lack of values and build a world based on shared values, one such value being the diversity that has always characterized humankind.

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NOTES

1. A world dominated and regulated, at will, by USmultinationals such as McDonald’s, that is denouncedvehemently in Europe for marketing junk food and junkculture, by such vociferous opponents of globalizationas José Bové, the head of the French Trade Union ofFarmers.

2. This French worldwide campaign was conceived andarticulated around the concept of l’exception culturelle(cultural difference) which defends the notion ofspécificité culturelle. The indirect outcome of thiscampaign was the creation of a political organizationto defend francophone culture and interests.

3. Cf. UNESCO, World Education Report 2000. The right toeducation: towards education for all throughout life, Paris,UNESCO Publications, 2000.

4. Cf. World Forum on Education, Final Report, Dakar,UNESCO, 2000, p.20.

5. Cf. J. Delors et al., Learning : the Treasure Within,Paris, UNESCO Publications and Odile Jacob, 1996, p.12onwards.

The tensions identified by the commission are asfollows:

a)The tension between the global and the local; b)The tension between the universal and the

individual;

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c)The tension between tradition and modernity; d)The tension between long-term and short-term

consideration; e)The tension between, on the one hand, the need

for competition, and on the other, the concernfor equality of opportunity;

f)The tension between the extraordinary expansionof knowledge and human beings’ capacity toassimilate it;

g)The tension between the spiritual and thematerial;

h)The tension between the market economy and themarket society.

6. Cf. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar et al., Our CreativeDiversity, Paris, UNESCO Publications, 1996. (Report onthe World Commission on Culture and Development).

7. A proof of this is the supremacy of the Englishlanguage in the material found on the net. It wasestimated in the year 2000 at about 60%.

8. Cf. WCEFA Inter-Agency Commission, Final Report of theWorld Conference on Education for All: Meeting Basic LearningNeeds. New York, UNICEF Publications, 1990. p. 44..

9. Ibid, p. 44.

10. Cf. Jean-Marie Domenach, Ce qu’il faut enseigner,Paris, 1989.

11. Cf. G. Gozzer, « School curricula and socialproblems » in Prospects 73: vol XX, n°1, 1990:9-19,Paris, UNESCO. P. 11.

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12. Cf. ISESCO, Parental Education, Rabat, ISESCOPublications, 2000.13.ISESCO has published in the year 2000 a book forthis purpose entitled “Islamic Perspective of InternationalEducation”. (Cf. Hassan Mohammed Hassan, IslamicPerspective of International Education, Rabat, ISESCOPublications, 2000).

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