Discussions

Dear friends from Global Education

We need your time, your help and your vote to be approved in the Rio+20 conferences and talk about Global Education in those events about sustainable development. www.riodialogues.org/

My name is Javier and I am attending the Rio+20 conference as a President of the Educational Association "Education for Life" www.educarparavivir.com. And I am also doing my Phd in Dissemination of Knowledge (Education) by the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil) with the thesis "the value of global education as an enginer of change to poverty eradication and to achieve a sustainable development".

In those conferences exist the possibility to participate as speaker, but the organization is doing a votation. I have presented the following proposal, but first I would like to say that I need you register in this website (free) here: https://www.riodialogues.org/login, where you can vote my proposal from 16th May to 6th June in the Sustainable development for fighting poverty Tab.

(after you are a member you also can send more request to other friends!)

PLEASE, spend your time doing it because you are not only helping to consolidate the global education as a solid way to change the world, or a student guy like me in his thesis, you are also helping to all the children that could be educated with a better perspectives of future!!

Thank you very much for your time 

here it is the proposal:

THE VALUE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION AS AN ENGINE TO PROMOTE POVERTY ERADICATION AND TO ACHIEVE A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The present recommendation for discussion intends to create a holist vision of education. In fact, we believe this is imperative to be dialogued with the international community of Rio+20, because it represents the basis of all moral values of the global citizenship. For this reason, we propose a reform in global educational with a humanistic and philanthropic vision that intends to achieve sustainable development and poverty eradication, while also contributing to the others Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

As stated in article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 by the United Nations, education was declared a Human Right:

“1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”

This proposal seeks to increase the previously stated Human Right. Because we live in a world where our decisions and actions affect others on a global scale, we must acknowledge and accept the notion of global citizenship. Young people are the inheritors of global change and for that reason the values and attitudes instilled in their education now will have an effect on the way global matters are addressed in the future. Therefore, 21st Century citizenship need a global education in order to see the future as their own evolution as a specie, without any type of ethnocentrism.

But, how could global education contribute to achieve sustainable development and poverty eradication?

Firstly, by creating a new multi, inter and trans-disciplinary subject for formal education, in primary and secondary school: “Education for Life”, we could integrate the MDG in theoretical and practical contents of the educational curriculum in all United Nations countries. This material must articulate and support cultural, transversal and innovative methodologies through multi, inter and trans-disciplinary contents, because the understanding of the MDG in a global world requires the development of different skills such as natural sciences and human sciences.

To integrate the MDG into the educational concepts does not mean creating a homogeneous education or westernizing the education, because all of the governments which participate in the UN will have to readapt the MDG in the educational contents, according to their diversity and historical-cultural characteristics.

Now is the time to discuss a new education that forms awareness of our global citizenship. How could we attempt to achieve the MDG if our states/countries do not integrate those contents in their educational curriculum? Is it possible to develop this awareness which achieves a sustainable development and poverty eradication, if we do not teach them with the same democratic moral values?

Secondly, while building an awareness of global citizenship, we could view informal and no formal education as an engine of change to create a peaceful society though international cooperation. Why not articulate a social network based on helping the most needy people? Could our governments create a new international service of volunteers which is equivalent to the military service in terms of national duty? This could be one of the most beautiful pieces of humanistic education and philanthropic actions to achieve the MDG.

Third, we propose a reform of multi, inter and trans-disciplinary education reform in the curricula of the universities in all the countries that are part of the United Nations, in order to teach “reading the world” through a new academic graduation: “wordlogy”. An innovate proposal with a humanistic vision to increase citizenship of 21st century awareness of the new paradigms that exist in the current era of globalization. In addition, wordlogy should be taught with the same curricular contents in all universities in different countries, giving the opportunity for students to study this new degree each year in each country, since the only way to be conscious of the economical, political and cultural dynamics that are successful in this inter-relational world is simply by traveling. Therefore, this new academic degree supplies an instructional tool to achieve citizens participation in the creation of a humanistic and global thought, founded in the progress and evolution of human beings as species: the homo concienciatus, which could achieve the MDG.

For all these reasons, we want to create a democratic debate in Rio+20 in order to attend to the global problems from an educational perspective, because we think that this is the basic way to achieve the MDG: creating a global citizenship based on philanthropic and humanistic moral values. And to those proposals the United Nations, as a supranational institution, has to articulate new ways for the different countries to restructurate their educational systems, in order to achieve the MDG. 

Will it be possible to create global citizens if the governments which signed the MDG in theoretical framework do not put any change into practice? We have remember that the world in which we are living, it is not a gift from our parents, if not a borrow from our children, and what will they think if we do not do all we have in our hands to improve the world? Thinking in  sustainable development future is also thinking about our children.

Please, vote for this proposal so that we mwy talk about global education in Rio+20 debates on June 16-19^th.

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