Mr. Chairman, Honorable Ministers,
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen
It is a great honor and pleasure to
meet with you here today to discuss strategies for the support,
improvement and growth of global education in order to move towards
the realization of the Millennium Development Goals. Poverty is the
greatest challenge of our time. The world community has agreed in
principle to address this shameful scourge against humanity, by
agreeing on the Millennium Development Goals. However, so far
performance is falling short in too many countries, both in the
North and South. The question to ask in this forum is therefore:
How can global education make a difference?
This Congress is important for many
reasons. It comes at a time after the Johannesburg Summit when it
is crucial to ask critical questions regarding the traditional
practice of global education, its form, content, role and how we
can co/operate to make education for a sustainable world into a
more effective and efficient tool. One factor is evident:
a prerequisite for achieving the Millennium Development Goals
is dialogue, i.e dialogue between major change agents in the
North and in the South. I am therefore particularly pleased to see
so many representatives from developing countries at this Congress.
By the way, I sincerely hope we in the North are also in some ways
still developing. That we are going somewhere...
Drawing on the conclusions of the
Johannesburg Summit, this Congress is based on the premise that the
Millennium Development Goals only can be achieved through increased
and improved global education. This premise however needs to be
nuanced
: more and improved global education does not automatically
lead to more effective poverty eradication. It depends both on
the contents of and the approach to global education.
Paolo Freire once pointed out his
difficulty in seeing education as the fundamental factor of social
change. In his opinion it is not education that in the last
analysis shapes society, it is vice versa. I agree with Freire when
he underlines that we should not think about education without
thinking about concrete power structures, concrete dominance
relationships, concrete patterns of production and distribution of
resources of all kinds within a given society. I now sound like a
Marxist, but I happen to think that Marx remains interesting, not
least his understanding of how and why the market economy
works.
Education is also a political
reality: there is no politically neutral education. Without
changing social arrangements which prevent the great majority of
human beings from being fully human beings, we will never get rid
of poverty. Think of the largely feudal systems still prevailing in
so many countries. Think of the hundreds of millions,
no billions in the world today without any real or
meaningful rights to property, to legal protections, to basic
health and education. Think of the debt crisis and unfair trading
regimes. Without making global education on the Millennium goals
part of a concrete process of socio/political action towards
progressive change, we will never have real and true global
education. More important, neither will the ambitious goals be
realized. In other words, global education must connect with the
realities of poverty.
In the last analysis, as Paolo
Freire explains, education is a certain theory of knowledge put
into practice. If knowledge is taken as something static which we
possess, it is easy to think of education as the transfer of
knowledge from those who possess it, to those who do not. Thus the
act of knowledge stops being creative. It is changed into a sort of
digestive act: knowing becomes to eat knowledge. By giving
knowledge to the poor or to anybody, instead of challenging them to
know by the act of unveiling reality themselves, we are simply
manipulating them, not helping them to realize their capacity for
acquiring consciousness by themselves.
Thus it is the poor themselves
through their representative organizations that will have to
participate actively and directly in shaping future global
education as a tool to conscientize the global public and through
them the politicians. It is the role of governments and
particularly civil society all over the world to facilitate such
processes in order to realize the Millennium Development Goals by
2015.
Global poverty is a result of
injustice. During the development assistance era service delivery
proved its limitations when it comes to reducing poverty.
Development for the poorest through service delivery has failed as
a stand alone strategy. Political empowerment must be given more
priority. The formulation of poverty reduction strategies in many
countries and coordinated donor support to these strategies
represents steps in the right direction. But success in meeting the
Millennium Development Goals will depend fundamentally on improving
democratic governance for real empowerment for the poor. For all
citizens it is about expanding opportunities and freedoms. Civil
society pursuing human rights as engine and instrument of change
has a crucial role to play. Partnership and networking between
progressive change agents in the North and the South, the East and
the West thus needs to be strengthened. Global education on the
Millennium Development Goals towards 2015 should have the rights
approach as one of its starting points and civil society and the
poor as important contributors to shaping its content.
Now a few words about how we have
attempted to take this agenda forward in Norway.
It would be preposterous to claim
that Norway has a comprehensive national strategy for global
education. We are however from the Governments side in the process
of developing at least some elements of such a strategy and we are
trying to do something.
The starting point has in many ways
been this year’s 50ieth anniversary of Norwegian development
assistance. We have launched a nationwide popular education
campaign to commemorate this anniversary initiating a number of
events and processes at the international, national, regional and
local levels. In addition to the quadrilogue players, we also
involved market representatives, i.e companies, employer and
employee associations. The focus has been on the Millennium
Development Goals with the Minister of Development Cooperation as a
lead figure. We started a campaign where all Norwegians are
encouraged to sign on to the Millennium Development Goals.
The aim has been to encourage
individual citizens to dig where they stand in relation to poverty
and international development problems. The implication is that
each individual should be encouraged to analyze his or her own
functions in relation to poverty and international development
issues and try to influence the respective and relevant decision
makers. Through International weeks in two major cities we have
particularly tried to involve the young generations and to avoid
preaching to those already converted. But also refugees, asylum
seekers, migrant workers have been stimulated to present their
cultures as well as voicing their criticisms in relation to aspects
of Norwegian society.
Some of the basic, underlying
assumptions of the campaign have been:
- The Norwegian public opinion’s support for international
development cooperation and the struggle against poverty is more
passive and fragile than before. The general knowledge related to
cooperation principles, forms, channels and partner countries are
limited as well as the understanding of the causes of poverty.
- Emergency aid and the short term efforts of NGOs often
overshadow the long term co/operation efforts of governments.
- The Norwegian North South engagement is starting to pursue its
own course independently of development cooperation. Globalisation
and trade issues, debt, tax on financial transactions are today
attracting greater interest and attention than traditional
development cooperation. This is a positive trend. The Government
has responded by making an Action Plan against Poverty which is
comprehensive and covers many areas.
- De ideologised and professional media encounter development
issues with professional news related demands.
- Education activities and public relation efforts give greater
public effect than advertising and should be the main approach
- The same development congregation should not be saved over and
over again, Uninformed strata such as the youth should be both the
main target group and the engine in future global education
activities. We have also created a Youth Panel that will monitor
and critizise our development efforts.
- There is a need for stronger alliances with major non
governmental organizations, the media and well qualified media
workers and their organizations, not only nationally but also
globally.
- The focus should be on future challenges and mobilization of
Norwegian society with the Millennium Development Goals and the
Governments Action Plan against poverty as the basis.
- Research, evaluation and monitoring of what works and what does
not in relation to the public opinion need to be prioritized.
- I would like to add a final point - as there must be 10, right
- which I believe we should insert into our future efforts. We need
to link up better to what is going on outside our borders. This is
why this meeting is so important.
A "global ecumene", a "universal
humanism", a "shared planet", a "cosmopolitan democracy" ; these
idealistic notions are not realities but possibilities and
aspirations. It will take bold political action both in the North
and the South to defeat the scourge of poverty. Global education
can bring us closer to realizing our grand hopes for the future, by
preparing the grounds for such political action. So that the issue
does not become: "can we afford to give all this aid, could we not
scale down and save money in the process?" Rather the question must
be: Can we still afford to be so stingy? A vibrant civil society
and active global social movements provide far off glimpses of a
more benign future. Global education might bring us closer to that
silver lining. Good luck with your deliberations.
