The harsh reality we face today that nearly seven plus billion people of vastly different cultures and values of varied national, religious, racial and ethnic attachments now inhabit one planet and compete for its limited resources and facilities. A dichotomy is thus created as unlimited human demands are mismatched with limited resources and facilities.
But a few have great wealth while hundreds of million suffer hunger and malnutrition. Some nations have great strength, others are weak or very weak. Tyranny and fear dominate large masses. National pride swells in the hearts of many nations, while self-determination remains an unfulfilled dream of oppressed minorities. By fair means or foul, hostile political and religious ideologies vie for acceptance and power.
To be in fair competition is acceptable; but the type of violent competition unleashed by Taliban or IS is shuddering. Acts that are condemned as illegal aggressions by some are hailed as just wars. What is religious fanaticism is hailed by some as acts of God's ordainments. The challenge we confront is whether we can subdue this explosive mélange long enough to fashion the conditions needed for a peaceful world.
Perfect solutions should not be expected; it is inevitable that conflicts will continue to arise, just as they do within families and inside the most orderly nations.
The fact that remedies are less than perfect does not mean that the search for improvements should be abandoned; to do so would invite consequences that would be infinitely more disastrous. Though the situation is fraught with peril, it is far from hopeless. The eager and discerning eye can find in the lessons of the past and the imperatives of the present, new policies that can help guide us out of the quagmire.
In our search for the path to universal peace, it may be advisable to focus on what has already been universally accepted as the essential structure for all orderly societies. An overview of human quest for peace through ages reveals that peaceful society rests on three pillars: 1. Laws (to specify what may or may not be done); 2. Courts (to resolve disputes and decide whether the codes have been violated); and 3. a system of effective law enforcement. In the heterogeneous and complicated international arena, we often find that laws are inadequate, courts lack binding authority and enforcement is practically non-existent. Small wonder that on taking office in 1982, UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cueller, was aghast at the "prevailing international anarchy."
Neither he nor any of his successors in that high position could do anything to transmute anarchy into order anywhere in or across the world. The present incumbent Antonio Guterres' predicament vis-a vis the Rohingya crisis is a pointer to the inherent structural inwardness of this suprational body.
The epicenter of threat to world peace appears to be in how the world system is constructed at this time. The prevalent world order is outrageously and dangerously undemocratic. A good deal of sermonizing emanates from the West for intra-country democratisation in the Third World.
It is true that much of the Third World needs democratization, but this should not be achieved without parallel democratization of the world order. Following the end to the Cold War and emergence of the United States as the sole superpower coupled with the process of globalization the world system is now the victim of tyranny of big powers over small powers.
This tyranny in the international system with arrogant postures of big powers is a mismatch with intra-country democracy. What is needed is pervasive democratisation; and it is a truism that democracy par excellence goes together with peace, internally and globally.
What about the UN as an insurance for world peace? Does it have any future? This body is ineffective and hamstrung by veto power of Security Council members, which is thoroughly undemocratic and which should be immediately done away with.
It is true that for the time being, this word body appears to be inert and lifeless. But that does not mean that it should be written off; for, the cost of its non-existence would be huge enough not to be bearable. The only sane alternative would be to democratize and renergisethis the body; and also to retrieve it from big power bullying. The world needs to breathe fresh air in an environment of culture of peace.
Education
The scenario pertaining to education is no better. Despite otherwise impressive quantitative expansion all over the world, quality alarmingly eludes education. Swami Vivekananda defined education as a process whereby the good already in humans is brought out. And, Muriel Spark, a British novelist, also thinks that "education is a leading out of what is already in the pupil's soul" (the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, ch.2).
Indeed, the English word 'education' is derived from the Latin conjoint 'edu' and 'cere', meaning to bring out. Now we squarely face the question: does education anywhere in the world now bring out the best in human soul? Had the answer been positive, the world would have been spared much of the troubles and tribulations it goes through. As it is, there is education, and quantitatively much, but much of which is soulless.
A body without soul is not a real body. In the same way, education without soul is not real education. In fact, G.K. Chesterton, (1874-1936) while conceiving education as a soul said, "Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another" ('sayings of the weak', The Observer, 6 July 1924).
Education has its contents designed to serve a purpose, esoteric or socially collective. As for contents we have the opinion of the British educator Thomas Arnold (1795-1842); he said while addressing a gathering, "What we must look for here is, first, religious and moral principles; secondly, gentlemanly conduct; thirdly, intellectual ability."
Maria Montessori (1870-1952), the Italian doctor and educationist, echoed the same perception of education as she wrote, "And if education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future.
For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?" (The Absorbent Mind) This totally developed individual and his knowledge are of utility to his society and across the world.
From a historical perspective, the world went through a great expansion in education over the past two centuries. This can be seen across all quantity measures. Global literacy rates have been climbing over the course of the last two centuries, mainly through increasing enrollment in primary education.
Secondary and tertiary education have also seen drastic growth, with global average years of schooling being much higher now than a hundred years ago. Despite all these worldwide improvements, some countries have been lagging behind, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, where there are still countries that have literacy rates below 50% among the youth. Moreover, another disquieting reality is that globally, 264 million children and adolescents do not have the opportunity to enter or complete school.
But increased financing for education and consequent expansion in the number of so-called educated ones do not bear directly on the sought-after quality of education. As it appears, human capital, not human resource is being produced. But we need both for a sustainable future.
Increased budgetary allocation and increased spending are no solution to the problem education is facing today, which needs substantive quality addition alongside quantitative expansion. In other words, while spending for education adequate attention should be given to quality insurance. Not only higher education, but the entire education gamut needs restructuring and revamping.
What we need is not only job market-oriented human capital to generate income, but also human resource to endow the society with humanity- the capital need for the present-day world. Just as Mathew Arnold conceives culture as "humanizing man in society" so also we think that education is ultimately for humanizing humans, and for which, there is no dearth of lead-thinking and literature.
Educationists across the world have had pertinent ideas on how to humanize education. Back at home, a thorough reading of Rabindranath Thakur's (1861-1941) essays on education would, I am sure, give us the necessary lead. The imperative is to act out these philosophical and empirical ideas for remodeling and rejuvenating education.
Concluding Observations
Looked through the prisms of culture, peace and education, the planet earth we inhabit appears to be topsy-turvy, reminding us of the two opening lines of Yeats' poem 'The Second Coming':
Things fall apart,
Centre cannot hold
This state of the world is not a recent phenomenon; the world has been so over a long stretch of time. Rabindranath, at the fag end of life, while having been dismayed at the sorry state of the world from which he would soon depart, he was conscience-driven to write a melancholy essay titled 'Savyatar Sangkat' (crisis of civilization). The world was in crisis during the days of Rabindranath; it has been so ever since.
The crisis has over the years further deepened in the same world. Thus, the question staring at us is: are we sleepwalking to an impending disaster? Maybe we are. But to quote again the saying of Rabindranath, which he uttered at the fag end of life, after having lived for eight decades, and having seen and understood much: "To loose faith in humans is a sin."
Accordingly, we do not yet loose faith; and, to buttress our faith we end with two quotes. The first one is from Thomas Paine's celebrated booklet Common Sense (1776), in which occurred this staccato hope-inducing sentence: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."And, at the same time, as we search for optimism and inspiration, we zero in on Robert Frost's poem titled 'It is Almost the Year Two Thousand', and quote the following exhortative lines:
To start the world of old
We had one age of gold
Not labored out of mines,
And some say there are signs,
The second such has come,
The True Millennium
The Final golden glow.
(Concluded)
The writer is Bangabandhu Chair Professor at Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP).
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