ACDC organized on 12th May a brainstorming concerning the theme of Education and how we see it in.

Education is the concept/ process that everybody is familiar with, but not all of us can define it easily. First of all, we see education linked with the formal school system, or with any given system with rules and structures. But is education more than that? How can we define the concept of education in a satisfactory way? Because education can be a process, a system, a way, it can be a transfer (of ideas or resources) and so on.

We could try to go deeper by saying: “What is the scope of education?”

Maybe if we understand the purpose of education, we are more comfortable at defining the concept. One could say “Education is meant for teaching/ transferring knowledge from one person to others” or “Education is necessary for the development of individuals and society” or “Education is the tool to make people responsible toward each others by transmitting them a set of values”. Well, we think that here we are getting closer to the core of the concept. So education is the tool of transmitting a set of values. VALUES. But what kind of values the individuals or the society needs? Which are the values that people need and education should give them? The answer seems easier than it looks because is enough to think of the world we are living now, at this moment, 2011. And what do we see, what values do we see that are being transmitted globally? We see that each value needs to have a concrete and quantifiable end. What cannot be calculated by indicators does not exist. Let’s take for example tolerance. 100 years ago tolerance was not a value itself, but now it became one, actually we are the witnesses of the birth of a new value (and of course the decline of others). Tolerance cannot be a value as long as it is not linked with something, measured or as long as it doesn’t produce results. We can be tolerant in general, but some are more tolerant than the others because they can measure the degree of tolerance: we can be tolerant to minorities (sexual, ethnical or religious), we can be tolerant to the influences that affect our lives or we can be tolerant to other values, in fact we can say we practice this value as long as it produces results.

But what about other values, that are universal and have been working naturally across the history? For example respect for the Family, Traditions and Religious beliefs? Or active concern for the Common good of the society? Or maybe these are not values? Or maybe they are not that important anymore since globalization is new and they are old?

This would be actually the core of the problem. Education exists as long as it transmits a set of values necessary for the development of the society. We could add that education is the process of harmonizing the individual in the pursue of a common (positive) goal.

But since we got so far, it would be good to ask ourselves which is the connection between Education, Values and Globalization?