Your Name and Title: Patricia Morales Maria del Carmen (Ph.D.)
School or Organization Name: Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium /
University Blas Pascal, Argentina
Co-Presenter Name (s):
Area of the world from which the present: Belgium / Argentina
Language in which the present: English
Target audience: teachers, teachers, students, policymakers
Description of presentation (one line):
The globally solidary responsibility as an educational goal
Description of the presentation (ie the length you want):
In our age of fascination of technology and facilitated information and communication,
it remains an open vital question, in which extent a mature moral consciousness
in the sense of Habermas and Kohlberg has emerged for us.
On the one hand, an instrumental and functional knowledge has been
developed as never before and has released us from many uncomfortable tasks. On
the other hand, the time that has been liberated in that process, is often scattered
or absorbed by a degraded use of the computers and similar things.
Moral reflection that has usually been the focus of the discussion on
the content of education, is now less considered and postponed to the personal area
of opinion and personal desires. This situation has not only consequences for
the individual, that develops their
private world, but also often neglect their solidary responsibility to the
global community.
There is an asymmetric management of globality, where we penetrate the
confines of the world, but suppress even more our consciousness on the need of
the others –in a global sense, also considering the future generations- and their
lack of material, structural, others, not be articulated dignified solutions to
their problems.
Since the Holocaust, the international community strives to strengthen international
legal norms on human rights. In a subsequent process, national constitutions are
being impregnated by this progressively global law. However, school and
university curricula in general dedicated scarce time and efforts to study and
analyse the current legislation at the national, regional and global levels.
I would like to share the view that essential documents that honour our
contemporary world. as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the comparative study of
national constitutions -their content of rights and obligations-, result of
great interest and surprise to the students. (Belgian, Spanish, and Latino-American
students examples can be provided).
This regulation provides a fruitful starting point for reinforcing the
moral task of education, stimulating our knowledge and responsibility towards
contemporary global challenges (political asylum, poverty, hunger, wars,
climate change and environmental issues). They would also contribute to the
implementation of these current regulations.
Replies