DG/93/36 Original: English/French UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION Address by Mr Federico Mayor Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at the International Symposium to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Associated Schools Project (ASP) Soest, Germany, 12 September 1993
DG/93/36 (The Director-General began his address in English) Mr Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Land of North-Rhine-Westphalia, Mr Vice-President of the German Commission for UNESCO, Mr Secretary-General of the National Commission, Mr Mayor of Soest, Ms Ute Ohoven Distinguished representatives and ASP national co-ordinators, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very pleased to be with you at this International Symposium to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Associated Schools Project (ASP). It is an occasion to celebrate all that has been achieved over the last four decades, to pay tribute to those who have made it possible, and - most important - to measure the challenges facing us in the crucial decade that lies ahead. We are very fortunate to be gathered here in the delightful and historic city of Soest, which as one of the first towns to rally to the Hanseatic League can itself claim to have been part of an early international network. Your own Network is somewhat broader in scope and purpose and today brings together national co-ordinators from over 50 countries worldwide to exchange ideas and experience on teaching young people the need - to put it at its simplest for the people of the world to live and develop as one family, in balance with the earth's natural resources. It is appropriate that this anniversary meeting should be taking place here in Soest, since Germany was one of the Member States of UNESCO instrumental in establishing the Associated Schools Project in 1953 and it has contributed in no small measure, at home and abroad, to making it the dynamic undertaking it is today. This is the moment to thank the German Commission for UNESCO - its President, Professor Canisius, his representative here today, Vice-Presidents Dr Hufner and Professor Schuchardt, Secretary-General, Dr Schofthaler, Deputy Secretary-General, MrReuther and all their staff - for their very close co-operation and involvement in the planning and preparation of this Symposium. I know that the German ASP national coordinator, Mr Uwe Buchendahl, and his colleague Ms Silvia Keil have been working particularly hard throughout the summer months, and we are indebted to them and to the entire German network of some 80 Associated Schools for their generous efforts and warm hospitality. I should also like to express my appreciation to the German Foreign Office for the substantial financial contribution it has made in support of this meeting, to our hosts the Government of the Land of North-Rhine-Westphalia and Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs, Mr Schwier, to the Municipality of Soest and its Burgemeister, and to the Institute for
DG/93/36 - page 2 Further Teacher Training for its valuable contribution. I must especially thank you, the national coordinators, for being here - with a special word of welcome for Ms Madeleine Verdière de Vits, national co-ordinator for French-speaking ASP schools in Belgium, who was a joint winner of the 1993 UNESCO Prize for Peace Education. Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, At the 1945 London Conference that met to establish UNESCO, the President of the proceedings posed a crucial question: 'Can we replace nationalist teaching by a conception of humanity that trains children to have a sense of mankind as well as of national citizenship?' The Associated Schools Project has, for the last 40 years, been in the forefront of efforts to provide positive, practical responses to this question. ASP is indeed in many ways an illustration of what UNESCO is about. Just as educationists and academics were instrumental in the establishment of UNESCO itself, so teachers were at the origin of ASP. We might say that the idea for the project came from the teaching profession, that UNESCO supplied the blueprint and that you - co-ordinators, educators and teachers - have been the architects and builders of the system. This is how it should be. The role of an international organization like UNESCO is in the last analysis a catalysing and co-ordinating one. Its strength lies in its ability to express the concerns and mobilize the efforts of the worldwide communities it represents. The drafters of the United Nations Charter were well inspired when they wrote in the preambular statement of the Organization's purposes: We the peoples of the United Nations... have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims'. The work of all those involved in the Associated Schools Project over the years have helped to bring closer the day when the goals of the United Nations will indeed be the active concern of all of us. It is encouraging, then, that the ASP network continues to expand. When it began in 1953 it involved only 33 schools in 15 Member States. Today it covers 117 countries and includes some 3,000 institutions, and the number continues to grow by the month. So far this year four more Member States have decided to join the project - Croatia, Slovenia, the Netherlands and, only last week, El Salvador - and I take this opportunity to extend them a warm welcome. The success of the project has led UNESCO to give serious consideration again to the idea of creating an international network of associated universities and associated libraries, which could provide a very valuable complement to the work of ASP in promoting international education. The basic purpose of the Associated Schools Project has remained very much that defined by UNESCO's General Conference when it launched the scheme in 1952, namely to 'encourage the development of education in the aims and activities of the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies and in the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights'. However, the scope of its concerns and activities has significantly expanded and evolved in keeping with the new challenges confronting the international community and the United Nations. Until recently, the world problem that dominated all others was the threat of war arising from the ideological divide between the superpowers - a divide that the Associated Schools worked tirelessly to bridge by continuing to promote the ideals of peace and the practice of international understanding. Today, the divide seen to pose the greatest threat to humanity is the poverty and knowledge gap, which condemns almost a third of the world's population to a life of deprivation and exclusion and is linked to other disturbing trends such as the demographic explosion, certain forms of environmental degradation, resource depletion, and
DG/93/36 - page 3 growing social problems of all kinds. More perhaps than in the past, the promotion of international understanding by the Associated Schools involves fostering an awareness of the fundamental asymmetries in the world and of what can be done to overcome them. Since these asymmetries are in many cases generative of conflict and violence, this theme links up with that of peace-building - which is more and more widely recognized as a central function of the United Nations alongside its traditional peace-keeping role. Peace-keeping is currently the main preoccupation of the United Nations missions, and this situation must progressively evolve so that peace-building becomes the main function. The true force of the United Nations is not force. The awareness is now growing everywhere: the moment has come to build peace in the minds of men. In the sphere of human rights, the focus of ASP concerns has naturally broadened as successive international instruments have elaborated or developed the implications of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is increased emphasis today on the rights of particular groups - the rights of women, of the child, of minorities, of indigenous peoples and, indeed, of future generations. There is also greater concern with the social context of human rights observance - in particular with the promotion of democracy as the essential context for the realization of human rights and with combating all those forms of intolerance - xenophobia, racism, fanaticism - at the root of so much violence in the world today. Mutual understanding between cultures has always been a central theme of international education. The unprecedented interpenetration of cultures that is occurring in an ever shrinking world has led to an increased accent on intercultural learning - that is to say, not simply a passive appreciation of other cultures but learning to live alongside them, including those of minority groups, indigenous peoples, immigrants and refugees. Tragic current examples of intercultural and inter-ethnic conflict present in all our minds underline the importance of continuing and developing ASP's work in this area. The other major theme that has come very much to the fore in international education is the protection of the global environment. The topic is obviously of vital importance in its own right, given the very real threat that exists to the earth's life support systems. At the same time, it can help to reinforce young peoples' sense of global solidarity in so far as planetary environmental problems concern humanity in its entirety. Moreover, since sustainability implies a reassessment of humanity's relationship to nature, the topic also has an important bearing on the wider question of values, on the forging of a new ethic for living in the twenty-first century. ASP is thus right to accord this topic top priority in its educational programmes. Ladies and Gentlemen, My dear friends. (The Director-General continued in French) As a pioneering venture, the Associated Schools Project must constantly seek new and more effective ways of advancing the cause of international education. In this respect, a number of its recent initiatives - in an abundance of remarkable activities at all levels - have captured my attention. Concerning the environment, the Baltic Sea project, launched under the auspices of ASP in 1989 and now involving some 200 schools in the nine countries bordering that sea, vividly demonstrates how young people from different countries can be mobilized in the protection of their shared surroundings. As you know, similar projects are under way for the Danube, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean.
DG/93/36 - page 4 In the domain of international understanding, last year saw an important event: the first International Children's Encounter, held in Costa Rica, which coincided with the Five-Hundredth Anniversary of the Encounter between Two Worlds and can be said to have helped to pave the way for the celebration of the International Year for the World's Indigenous People in 1993. I should add that at the end of this month, an International Peace Festival for Children is to be held in the Olympic city of Lillehammer, Norway. One of the most important objectives of the Associated Schools Project is to promote intercultural understanding. In this connection, I should like to congratulate all the students and institutions which have presented their countries, cultures, ambitions and expectations in such a lively, sincere and frequently humorous fashion in the new collection of teaching material entitled 'Come Visit Our Country'. I hope that thanks to the efforts of Associated Schools and their teachers in other countries new titles will soon be added to this collection. Given the importance of education in the training of democratic citizens, permit me also to mention the publication entitled 'La culture démocratique', which contains examples of your teaching work in eight Member States. Mr Meyer-Bisch, in his Introduction, uses what I find an extremely telling image to express the ideal of education in the Associated Schools: 'The school is both a conservatoire for culture and cultures, and a proving ground where progress in democratization can be tested. It is a conservatoire in the sense in which this fine word is used to describe a school of music; it is the place where culture is "conserved" just as a fire is conserved by lighting spills from it and learning how to use them (...). In this conservationist mode, the school provides instruction in the practice of a variety of disciplines; as a laboratory, it creates the conditions for systematic and responsible dialogue among pupils and students. It is our keen hope that... the UNESCO Associated Schools Project will serve as tinder whereby the fire may be preserved and rapidly transmitted'. I should like to thank the Swiss National Commission for its assistance in publishing this study, which will certainly be of great help to the many countries of Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere which are currently undergoing the difficult transition to democracy. UNESCO is deeply grateful to all those who, as co-ordinators, teachers or administrators in the Associated Schools, have done so much to make young people aware of the problems of our planet and to awake in them a sense of global solidarity. We all know - and I say this as a former faculty member myself - how arduous the teaching profession can be, and how difficult it is to preserve one's enthusiasm in the face of daily harassments. Nevertheless, it is very much to be hoped that you will continue as you are now doing to support the action of the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies, particularly by encouraging schools and teachers throughout the world to play an active part in the celebration of our fiftieth anniversary in 1995, as well as in the preparation of the International Year of the Family (1994) and the United Nations Year for Tolerance (1995). UNESCO is especially appreciative of the support given by the Associated Schools to literacy work and basic education; it is my hope that close co-operation will be instituted with the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, which was created last year and which is presided over by Mr Jacques Delors. (The Director-General continued in English) The importance of ASP's function and the steady expansion of its network clearly call for careful planning of its future development. It is appropriate therefore that this meeting should be examining a draft ASP Strategy and Plan of Action for the period 1994-2000. I would not wish to pre-empt your discussion of this document, which seems to me to identify the essential
DG/93/36 - page 5 priorities, but I should like to offer a few comments on what I see as important points to bear in mind in charting the future of ASP. One of the essential tasks for ASP in the years to come must be to secure increased support for the project from national authorities, in particular to ensure the formulation of a minimum ASP strategy for furthering international education. It is important in this connection that international education should be perceived not simply as an adjunct to the curriculum but as an integral and indispensable constituent of modern education. Support from national authorities needs to be matched by closer linkages with a whole range of governmental and non-governmental partners in a position to assist ASP. I would add that it is my hope that, by the year 2000, all Member States will be taking part in the Associated Schools Project. As a network of pilot projects designed to have a multiplier effect within the world of education, ASP must place great emphasis on full monitoring and reporting of its activities. Efforts should also be made to improve co-ordination and synergy and to avoid duplication of effort within the network. Twinning and exchange relationships among both teachers and learners should obviously be developed since international understanding is best learnt through practice rather than theory. Finally, teachers being key factors in the development of international education, there should be more focus on involving teacher-training institutions in the project. I know I can count on you to pursue and renew your efforts to lay the foundations in the minds and hearts of young people for the necessary transition from a culture of war to a culture of peace. I believe that international education must come to be seen for what it is - not a Utopian prescription for international concord but rather a necessary practical preparation for living in today's and tomorrow's increasingly global society. I shall continue my efforts to strengthen ASP. The process of decentralizing many ASP activities to UNESCO's Regional Offices will continue. I have also taken steps to increase the staff responsible for ASP and have proposed increased funds for the project for the next biennium. I sincerely hope that Member States will endorse and match this commitment. Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. Let us never forget that our most precious resources are the world's children. In this connection, I have just issued an appeal - coinciding with the start of the new school year - to all those responsible for children's education, upbringing and welfare to help to guide young people along the path of dialogue, respect for others and sharing, to develop their potential for openness and generosity, and to forearm them against the facile attractions of violence. I take this occasion to express my thanks and strong support to your movement for all it is doing to encourage young people to reject violent behaviour and to seek peaceful means of resolving disagreements and conflicts. It has been said that the only two lasting gifts we can hope to give our children are roots and wings. You are helping to ensure, through the Associated Schools Project, that education not only roots the younger generations in the experience of the past but gives them wings to participate in humanity's continuing quest for new and brighter horizons.