Questions and answers | Table 1 - Educational Session, CUMIPAZ 2017

We thank Dr. Bertha Guadalupe Rodríguez for her brilliant presentation.

We already have some questions elaborated (...) We are going to review some of the questions that we have (although I have not had time to review them to see if I can associate them).

Here is an initial question regarding a definition. They ask Dr. Kolangui to tell us: What is a culture of integral peace?

ANSWER

Tamara Kolangui Nisanof

When I refer to a culture of integral peace, it is a culture of transversal peace, where each one of the subjects and the political, academic, cultural, social and economic contexts are inserted within this culture.

Nowadays the tendency -especially in Mexico- is that there is no subject that exists in matters of ethics or citizenship. So, what we try to implement is that at a transversal level, at any time, in any subject, the teacher can be taught to take education issues for peace, to create a culture of peace that has all these integral contexts; not only specific to the economy or in politics or cultural issues, but to be comprehensive from the four points of view.

MODERATOR

Thank you, Doctor.

Doctor Restrepo: What were the possible errors in today's education process, of corrupt politicians? How can we mitigate this phenomenon with the future leaders of the country?

ANSWER

Dr. Néstor David Restrepo Bonnett

To begin to list a series of errors would be quite complex, but there is one that is fundamental, and is that education did not become the transforming engine of society, a society was thought apart from education. What brought this? That, logically, the teacher loses a leading role in this social transformation and we are defining only and exclusively education as the sum of basic areas of knowledge (we just mention them now: mathematics, biology, Spanish, etc., etc.) forgetting about the human being as such.

Leaving the classroom forces us to talk about humanity: human beings living, working and living with human beings. A country that thinks outside of education ends up being unquestionably a mechanization of death, a mechanization of commerce, but never a society of the human being.

MODERATOR

Thank you, Doctor

The third question is for Dr. Santiago Castellá (two questions in one): Faced with the reality of a global world that educates positively or negatively, how can the web be used as a tool for peace?

And the second question for you is: Why the importance of teaching the Holocaust as a tool to build a culture for peace?

ANSWER

Dr. Santiago Castellá Surribas

We will start with the second one very briefly. The Holocaust - I believe that I have explained it - appears as a foundational fact of the International Law of Human Rights; it is from that moment when the world becomes aware that human rights cease to be a matter essentially of the internal jurisdiction of States and become a matter of international concern.

But I think it also marks the critical point in which there is awareness of the limits of modernity. The speech of optimistic modernity, the enlightened speech, the speech of progress breaks down in the moment when having more freedom, more capacity to use our reason, we become a monster, we become capable beings of genocide, of extermination, of ethnic cleansing.

At that time modernity, the chastened illustration -we could say- is rethinking its values. I believe that there are two great ways of interpreting it: those philosophical authors who speak of postmodernity, who pretend to substitute modernity for other elements not based on enlightened values; and the authors who defend a liquid modernity where the reinterpretation of these values in a new context allows the continuity of the illustrated discourse.

The network, the internet, is a very useful instrument for training in values, education in peace and education in human rights; but permanently needs guides and capacity for discrimination.

And here is one of the problems that I pointed out, the possibility that false knowledge, knowledge without a scientific basis, closed worldviews articulate new closed, self-referenced realities that do not interact with the rest of the communities.

MODERATOR

Thank you.

And the last question, for Dr. Bertha Rodríguez, tells us: The global education model establishes teaching guidelines that lead to economies of quick benefits: teachers and non-teachers are licensed, results are required and not training. How can this orientation be changed?

And a follow-up question is: If you want to be autonomous, if you want the teacher to be autonomous, how can this be achieved if there are so many guidelines that are set for teachers?

ANSWER to the second question

Dra. Bertha Rodríguez

Certainly ... well, with the second question. Indeed, we have a problem with academic freedom at the National Autonomous University of Mexico: there are many regulations, there is a university legislation that must be complied with, there is a very strong structure; but we must know how to adapt the autonomy that the academic has to be able to teach his subject, to be able to teach his class and not get out of that legislation, of that legal framework that sometimes seems excessively rigid. (That is the second).

ANSWER to the first question

Dra. Bertha Rodríguez

Precisely the issues .... give a value to all the knowledge that the academic has, in a way which the class can be taught, and not be subject to the productive system; because suddenly what the university did was to assemble what the productive system needs, and nothing else but assemble and assemble, and not give that freedom to the whole educational system; It should also be linked to the basic system, the secondary system, to the graduate level, taking into account the national needs of the country, not the needs of the productive sector, which speaks to us of competitiveness and (as the panelists said ) not accumulating any more knowledge and working for a purpose, which is to be productive and not to develop respect for human rights, respect for Mother Earth, respect in any case for the environment in general and respect for the community. I believe that the lack of values ​​and daily basis work is what causes quality of education to not be evaluated, it is what causes us to do nothing more than assemble knowledge and research.

MODERATOR

One last question, doctor Restrepo: What do you think about the Peace Process in Colombia? And what does it take to be successful?

ANSWER

Dr. Néstor David Restrepo Bonnett

They are not recording, right? [Laughs]

I am a very strong defender of the peace process in my country. It was necessary, and we could not give ourselves the right to continue extending a reality.

I have not known - at least in what I have studied in many years of academia - a peace process that is perfect; and we should know the social, political and economic context of what Colombia means today to really understand that peace process.

What is required to be successful? Not only that it be a process of peace that depends on the current government -as it has been tried at some time-, but that the conclusions or the consequences of this, also go with the possibility of the transformation of those who were previously in the rank of an armed group.

I, in my academic discussions, never use the word post-conflict, I prefer to talk about post-agreement. We in Colombia have different groups outside the law; Negotiations were made with one of them, but others are missing.

To this we must add a correct pedagogy of what a peace process means. Unfortunately, as it was presented at a national and international level many of our people thought that it was signed and the next day the sun would come out differently, there were no other problems, the social conflict was going to end; it is always going to exist, it is part of the human process.

Then, a peace process with a correct pedagogy, that involves certain realities in the territory but that in turn provides opportunities for the demobilized, so that in this contradiction to move from the guerrilla rank to become part of the citizenship, and have academic, economic, labor, family opportunities, will provide, in some way, the necessary and sufficient tools to speak of a stable and lasting agreement.

MODERATOR

Thank you very much, Dr. Restrepo. And with this answer we have finished the session of Table # 1, of Education for Peace: Pedagogical Innovations.