| The management of interculturel education | | Print | |
| Ioan Jinga / Christoffer Stoerup | 21.10.2006 | Science - Articles | ||||
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(EN) The article discusses the need of an active educational policy to face problems related to multi-cultural societies generally and present-day Romania specificly. It’s the authors claim that inter-cultural education should promote acceptance and tolerance towards culturally diversity within the society, but also coerce the cultural minorities to act responsible and in solidarity with the majority in society in which they live. According to the author the latter is the main problem in Romania.
by prof. dr. Ioan Jinga The Academy of Economics Studies of Bucharest, Training of the Teaching Staff Department Education is – in the conception of the Romanian scientist in child education Constantin Narly, - “a social deed and an individual one at the same time. It is about what happens around us and at the same time with us. From birth to death every one of us is the spectator and the actor of this fact.” (1, p. 67). I quoted Narly in order to stress the link between the individual and the surrounding world (the environment) mainly with the society and also in order to emphasize the fact that “education” means action” (2, p. 7) that is “exercised by the adult generations over those who a not yet mature are not enough on social life” (2, p. 8). On the conditions in which the society decides on the aims functions and contents of the education it is obvious that at certain periods stages of its evolutions, society can also express new educational tasks for the society and for the individual as well, such as those regarding tolerance and understanding, cooperation between people coming from different cultures, who have different religions and political conceptions or different traditions and ambitions. Phenomena such as globalization or the union of states, (the European Union, the Communion of Independent States, U.S.A. and others) also raise new problems towards educations which, volens nolens, has to make the young generations ready for this perspective/aim. In the U.N.O. Charter which was signed on the 26th of June exactly the year when World War II was ended, an appeal which is even nowadays real, was launched “To practice tolerance, to live in peace with one another as good neighbours” (3, p.317). Since those times education was meant to have a new function which we call today intercultural education along side to its cognitive, socio-moral and insertive functions. Practicing this new function requires the existence of least 2 major objective aims: The recognition and acceptance of the cultural diversity; The supporting of intercultural communication as a premise for peacefully living together in communities that contain different cultures and also for cooperation. I must stress on the outstanding importance of such objectives now when the prognoses of competent international forums call upon some tendencies that may lead to generating new global or regional conflicts based on manipulation from a political, economic or religious point of view leading to terrorism and separatism on ethnical or religions, even cultural criteria. Such phenomena, especially with population moving from one geographical area to another are so evident (I have in view the migration phenomena first of all) can and will raise serious problems for the education on the world wide scale because it has a leading role in the development of the human personality and quite often it can influence some times decisievely) their heredity and the enviroment. But the multicultural education should aim not only at the migration strata of the society but also at the culturally heterogenous layers of the majority of population. on the whole. Because if you are to speak of the case in Romania it is not the Romanians who have to accept the Hungarians but quite the other way round (the opposite). A recent study by 2000 Education Centre offers enough data in the support of this assertion but also solutions for suitable intercultural policy in the field of education (4; p. 7-68). The Romanian realities prove by the force of facts that the average Romanian is often too tolerant, discrimination being present mostly in jokes about some minorities who by their behaviour, become “remarcable” in a negative way, trespassing (sometimes seriously) the standards of living together. Some of the minorities reveal characteristics difficult to be accepted such as intolerance towards other ethnic populations or the tendency to take control in the domains such as business, mass media, the banking or financial system, etc, or reveal their arrogance and others of the like. I am asserting this because education is able to correct many of the social and individual flaws but it alone cannot succeed in eradicating them. It must be supported /helped by coercive measures when the behaviour of the minorities defy the laws of the country or the norms of social life. Thus education in general as well as the intercultural one in particular become simple demagogic slogans “What I have mentioned above does not deny the necesstiy for a pedagogy of cultural diversity as Anca Nedelcu defines it (5, p. 105-115) it only signals the danger that the fetishism of only one factor of the whole constellation of factors may bring for those who can must contribute to the education of children, youth and adults, for the acceptance of the cultural diversity as well as for tolerance, cooperation and understanding in a world marked by all kinds of contradictions and threatened by so many dangers. In this respect I have in view the school, church, army, the trade-unions, the students’ and pupils` associations, the cultural societies, the mass media, whose contribution needs to be integrated into a unitary system on a local and national scale. From the perspective of the management the algorithm of an efficient intercultural education should refer to these steps: 1. the drawing up of diagnosis studies in order that the real state of things be by analysed in different parts of the country. 2. the creation of prognosis studies to get information and data about the probable evolution and configuration of the Romanian population from the ethnic and religious point of view. 3. the producing of comparative studies in order to know how this problem is tackled and solved by other countries. 4. sequential and global debating of the set of problems generated by multiculturalism in Romania and elsewhere. 5. the elaboration of a national program for intercultural education specifying the objectives to be followed (on short, medium and long term) and the specific targets for each element, the necessary resources as well as the evaluation means. Such a program is only sure to succeed if based on a political consensus, being approved by the Romanian Parliament and on a Governmental support (regardless of the political “colour” of the respective government). The question stays open both for the interdisciplinary researches and for practical solutions what is certain is that the problem exists, it is important and must be solved taking into account the Romanian realities. Bibliographical references: 1. Constantin Narly: General Pedagogy, by Didactic and Pedagogic Printing House, Bucharest, 1996. 2. A. Bolinineanu, M. Malita: The UNO Charter –document of our era: Political Printing House, Bucharest, 1970. 3. Lavinia Bârlogeanu, Alexandru Crişan: Guide for Intercultural Politics, Humanitas Printing House, Bucharest 2005. 4. Gaston Mialaret: Introdution in Pedagogy – 1976. 5. Anca Nedelcu: The Pedagogy of the Cultural Diversity – aspirations and achievments, in: Identy and Globalization, co-ordinator: L. Barlogeanu, 2000 Educational Centre, Humanitas P.H. Bucharest 2005. |
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