World Syntegrity Project
Collated Statements of Importance

Topic: Education

EDUCATION HAS TO BE IMPROVED - Dark Blue - AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

1. The title is wrong. Think of a better one!
2. Education is a fundamental right of all people.
3. Education as a spearhead for speeding up the acquirement of self-management and competence (which includes the organisation of supportive requirements, such as food, medicine, transportation, etc.)
4. Points of departure for form and content of education (in other words, suggestions for the form of organisation)

   FROM:	-----	TOWARD:
   instruction	-----	dialogue
   reproduction	-----	construction
   education	-----	educating
   knowledge	-----	skill
   skill	-----	action
   knowledge	-----	knowing
   criticism	-----	creativity
   mono-cultural	-----	cross-cultural (reciprocity)
   hierarchical	-----	self-organising
   teaching system	-----	learning system
   closed	-----	open

   A United Nations higher commissioner of education should be appointed, who takes initiatives on the basis of the above mentioned points of departure to create

   • a world ministry of education
   • a universal support system, which makes use of information and communication technology, human resources, such as unemployed experts, etc.
5. FINANCE
   • educational budgets
   • General Directory of International Cooperation
   • Foster Teacher Plan
   • Private initiative

LEADING IDEAS FOR SOCIAL EVOLUTION - Green - AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

• Increase relational thinking in education, for instance through:
  • simulation games
  • forms of training and
  • self relativating

Make sure that benefits are directly part of experience

• Increase inter subjective truth finding, e.g.
  • through attacking the idea of the existence of an Archimedian point.
  • Syntegrity projects.

Make sure that participants are specifically involved in decision making.

• Increase the skill to keep problem definitions open; e.g. through:
  • building pies in the sky, fairy tales, art
  • humor, poetry, cabaret

Make especially sure that people learn to cope with uncertainty.

• Mobilise survival knowledge.
• Regulate overkill, through deregulation.
• Apply uncertainty creating technologies
• Give more visible applause.
• Publish dictionaries in which words have at least two meanings.

DEVELOPMENT MODELS - Black - BOGOTA, COLOMBIA

Development is a human enhancement process not limited to the accumulation of material wealth, power or knowledge. It implies an existence based on the awareness of self-fulfillment, both individually and collectively, with more than just one way or channel of expression. Its purpose cannot be to have more but to be more.

A dynamic system capable of stimulating development must respond to an agreement of wills and understandings within the framework of the historical, geographical and social conditions of each group, where the quality of life is centred as a sound integrating and stimulating element.

The interrelationship among systems develops on an equitable basis when members of these groups are able to grow according to their innermost nature.

EDUCATION - Light Blue - BOGOTA, COLOMBIA

Freedom, justice and fraternity - the foundations of human relationships - are possible only if man has complete access to an integrated education.

The planetary constitution ensures free access to a maximum level of education, promotes the freeing education which generates the creative relationship between the individual and his surroundings and supports research for the benefit of mankind.

The planetary constitution promotes educational processes that democratically funnel the knowledge generated by all human cultures.

At a world scale, an educational process for man will acknowledge cultural diversity.

Education to satisfy demand is, in a consumption society, a powerful tool to perpetuate power groups. As an alternative, education generates an integral development of the human potential (at the biological, ecological, social and community levels).

Education must allow for the integral development of:

• Continuous processes to refine thought and sensitivity.
• A synergical focusing of the particular in the midst of the global.
• Specialization as an integration tool.
• Research as a tool to preserve and develop the planet's heritage.

EDUCATION - Gold - BURLINGTON, VERMONT

Education is the means to transformation to world government through active support and implementation of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

From early childhood humans would be educated for global citizenship; understanding other cultures; learning various languages; embracing holistic ideas, attitudes and values. Such education would ensure the success and meet the needs of all students; both teachers and students would be lifelong learners.

The purpose of education is to support the student in developing as thinking, responsible, creative individuals participating in the stewardship of all aspects of life from the local to the global.

Areas of learning will include: conflict resolution culture and languages ecology all aspects of the human family relationship

EDUCATION - CAIRO, EGYPT

• To wipe out illiteracy in the world irrespective of sex, age, tribe, poorness or richness, free education worldwide should be established.
• For more positive technological advancement, as a vehicle for better governance, for civilization and democracy everywhere, free education is a sine qua non.
• For development of an individual and self-sustenance, education which every Dick and Harry can get is highly necessary.
• Education system should be universalized, and provision of education for all ages should be established.

KNOWLEDGE-EDUCATION - Green - LIVERPOOL, U.K

.

Lifelong learning on world issues & their interconnections (including cultures) in content of formal and informal education should be implemented to create a greater understanding through the curriculum.

Developed by & for the individual learner through local issues and actions.

EDUCATION, EMPOWERMENT AND WORLD CITIZENSHIP - Gold - MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

General

Education needs to be seen as the lifelong process, a post-conventional education in the sense that it equips the individual to become aware of alternative future options, to take responsibility for their ethical choices, and is presented in ways accessible to each other.

Proposal

UNESCO and/or other institutions to endorse in principle and promote the development and launching of a World Citizenship Curriculum to be adopted around the world.

Within a post-conventional integrated approach, the content needs to include:

1. A focus on the purpose/goal of world citizenship
2. An immersion in healthy, sensual, aesthetic experiencing
3. An understanding of global interdependence.
4. A focus on concern for future generations.
5. A critical understanding of technology.
6. A focus on world citizen rights and responsibilities.

EDUCATION - NEW HARTFORD, NEW YORK

Education should be universal, lifelong, free, worldwide, individualized, ungraded, empowering, and teach self-responsibility. To this end, people should be educated about all drugs (prescription and nonprescription; legal and illegal). In order to maximize everyone's potential education should include vocational and recreational training. Universal Head Start Programs should be a part of every child's experience preparing them for entrance into more formal education. Private sector involvement is very much encouraged in education, most especially in higher education in order to link education to becoming qualified for work. There should be universal dislocated worker career training and retraining.

HUMAN EDUCATION - Red - SWANSEA, WALES

The group wants to restructure education to serve what we see as the purpose not in terms of details but in general principles. Firstly, principles of cooperative institutional structures such as non-hierarchy, equality, locally based curriculum in conjunction with wider concerns. Secondly, teaching principles which focus on development from within of whoever is being educated in accordance with the need to generally equip them for life with practical skills, factual knowledge and understanding of the world.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WAY PEOPLE THINK. HOW CAN WE CHANGE? - Silver - SWANSEA UNIVERSITY

This group started with a statement speaking of a radical change needed in society, something of which people are generally fearful. We thought that change is feared because it is generally imposed and not owned by the people who have to live with change. Recognizing the relationship between thought and action, the importance of the way people think to human society is paramount. Realizing that many ingredients of one's experience are coloured by conditioning and empowered through a process of learning thinking tools to enable people to think for themselves, existing power relations which are the source of the need for radical change spoken of, can be equalized by helping free people from ideological domination and so contributing to behavior to a more equal state of affairs based on each individuals empowerment thus making the change each person's own.

Teaching materials for the dissemination of these tools are freely available and already in use in education systems worldwide. Anybody can get them and use them to start college courses in their locality. This is an avenue open to anyone who wishes to do something practical towards a fairer world.

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