International Conference on “Standardizing Chinese-foreign Cooperation in Running Schools, Exercising Administration According to Law and Promoting Sustainable Development” June 20th -21st, 2011, Xiamen, China
About the Author
The Land Ethic In“The Imperative of Responsibility. In Search of an Ethics for the
Technological Age”, Hans Jonas, German Jew who emigrated to Canada and the USA,
considering the tremendous influence of modern technical procedures on nature,
formulates a new categorical imperative for human action, beyond the maximum
ethics of conformation of individual acts with the principle of a universal
law, a new ethical framework, which results from the need to configure the
human conduct within the limits that safeguard the continuity of life and its
diversity. Enunciated in 1979 by James Lovelock and soon supported by American Carl
Sagan awarding. Animal Ethics Authors Australian Peter Singer
and American T. Regan emphasize the feelings and the rights of animals, given
the brutality of modern production processes: genetic cloning, cages,
feedstuffs based on ground meat from dead animals and saturated with hormones,
systematic violation of natural rhythms and needs of animal life, all this in
terms of maximum profit. Why environmental ethics
must prevail, over democratic and socialist politics, modern science and
international right
V.
Figure 1. Change of information systems and knowledge
between the 20th and 21st centuries
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to review the Strategic goals of the State Guidelines for Medium-to-Long-Term
Education Reform and Development Plan (2010-2020), linking Moral Education
with Environmental Education in a system where social core values should be associated
to the universal core values of environmental ethics, based on the issue of
anthropocentrism and ethnocentrism principles and incorporated into the
national education.
“Delivering education equally to everyone” is associated to the critical
problem of the initial and lifelong formation of teachers, in three dimensions:
scientific, technico -pedagogical and ethical.
The concept of “quality education
in various ways” focuses on literacy as a new paradigm to science and
civilization. This paper examines the traditional model of scientific and
technological expertise, based on the myth of unrestricted growth, which has
suffered frequent challenges, allowing the formation of new perspectives on the
relationship between nature/environment and progress, which, in turn, has given
rise to the concept of sustainable development.
Growing from a vision of an interdisciplinary scientific approach, with
a social ethics dimension, this work has provided insight into questions
relating to the evolution of higher education throughout the twentieth century.
The dilemmas encountered there included the search for a functional model of
education for specialist fields, integrating Polytechnic Institutes alongside
Universities, while maintaining the fundamental mission of furthering
investigational research.
“Building a consummate framework for lifelong
education” is a study of the structural change in the educational system in the
last quarter of the twentieth century and the connection between formal
education, non-formal education and informal education, in the context of
bringing to light the “hidden curriculum”.
In
this basis, the article tries to make a contribution to the establishment of a
strategic pilot plan to face the challenges in Chinese-foreign cooperation in
running schools and to design a model of transnational exchange education
through educational policies and practices
Keywords
environmental ethics, non-formal education, new-paradigm
Author
António dos Santos Queirós
Offices
Lisbon
University Philosophy Centre. Portugal
Teacher’s
Professional Training Centre of Conimbriga,Cefop.Conimbriga (I&D)
Researcher
and Professor. Cefop.Conimbriga (I&D) Chairman. Lisbon University
Philosophy Centre, Researcher. Mc2p, Association of Science Museums
and Centers of Portugal, President. PhD Sciences Philosophy
Address
Centro de Filosofia. Faculdade de Letras da
Universidade de Lisboa.
Alameda da Universidade
1600-214
Lisboa
Portugal
Portugal
Tel @ Fax
00351 239 944764 Mobile : 00351 910506370 Fax : 00351 239945202
E-mail
I.
This paper reviews strategic goals of the State Guidelines for Medium-to-Long-Term Education Reform and
Development Plan (2010-2020), linking Moral Education and Environmental
Education on the basis that the system
of social core values should be associated to the universal core values of
environmental ethics, based on anthropocentric and ethnocentric principles, and
should be incorporated into the national education.
The millinery
contribution of Chinese culture and civilization to World Heritage must be
preserved in the education reforms and projected to the World, as well as the
progress of New China
The complexity and originality of China, a magnificent and ancestral civilization with over 4,000
years of history, and the circumstances
of the feudal system in this country have lasted up to modern times. This has
created the material conditions and social conscience that necessarily
determine the model of modern Chinese democracy, which is incomparable to any
other.
The first step, building the foundations of economic democracy by
abolishing the feudal property relationships and surrendering the land to more
than five hundred million poor peasants, was accompanied by the creation of the
basic structures for banking, telecommunications, energy, media, education,
health and research. This first emerged in areas conquered by the Chinese
PLA (People's Liberation Army) and later
through the creation of PRC (People’s Republic of China).
The painful experience of Korea and the tragic "great leap
forward" raised the question of the need to consider how decisive the
weight of scientific and technological progress was, under the impetus of the
leaders of the PLA. After the death of Mao, Deng Xiaoping, a Communist veteran
of the long March who had management experience in the party and in the
Government, prepared the program of the "Four Modernizations"
(agriculture, industry, the armed forces,
science and technology) with Chu-En-Lai, which was adopted at the Third
Plenum of the 11th Central Committee (December 1978). It was completed soon
after the opening up to the world economy, through the system of special
economic zones (ZEEs). The Secretary-General of the CCP,(Chinese Communist
Party) Zheo Ziyang, (XIII Congress,
1987) then expanded the whole coastal
zone, which helped towards the integration of China into the "great
circle". The official position of
the CCP is that currently a country can only develop itself if it is integrated
in the global economy.
This policy of the new leaders of the CCP was decisive to escape the
risk of the concentration of the modernization
effort in the military field and to put an end to the disorder provoked by the
cultural revolution, creating conditions of stability and independence of
scientific management in major academies, universities and centers of science
of China.
From the early sixties, China established an essential objective: to
build a new democracy from the ruins of a country devastated by Japanese
aggression and to provide food, health care and education to one-fifth of
humanity, which suffered the chaos and misery sown by an imperialist war.
The American magazine Time (28.09.09)
devoted its cover page to China and published a comparative table of the
Chinese nation, before and after the Republic was founded on October 1, 1949. A
population of 542 million grew to 1,300 million citizens; life expectancy rose
from 36.5 to 73.4 years; the income per capita increased from 51 dollars to
2,770; the "foreign-exchange reserves", previously non-existent,
amounted to 2 trillion dollars, the largest in the world; the number of students
in higher education rose from 112,000 to 2,200 million for each academic year;
illiteracy, which had reached 80% of the population, was almost eradicated and
nowadays 206 million young people attend primary and secondary education;
infant mortality has fallen from 1,500 to 34.2 for every 100,000 births.
In December 2008, The Economist, recognized that currently, two thirds
of the production of goods in China, comes from companies that do not belong to
the nationalized sector, while the State dominates the key sectors of banking,
telecommunications, energy and media. (The Second Long March, PG. 29). In this
article, citing World Bank statistics, The Economist illustrates the economic
progress of democracy in China, over the past thirty years, without ever
mentioning the important factor that 200 million citizens no longer live in
poverty, the income of the rural population quadrupled and there was a 70%
increase of cereals production in a continental country which, when compared to
Europe, has only 40% of arable land.
The results obtained in terms of the index of social progress show
remarkable progress in the second half
of the twentieth century, even if the Western ethnocentric view might not be
conscious of it.
China has become an investment when it comes to job creation, education
and public health, which is incomparable to any other country.
Based on this national, patriotic and popular goal, the working-class,
educated in the primacy of the collective over the individual, and following
Confucian philosophy for 2,000 years,
has found in its communist ideals a line of continuity with tradition, while at
the same time finding a way to maintain its
own principles.
Confucianism from the year 100 b.c. to 1900 a.d. influenced education and the Government and guided
social behavior and the duty of the individual towards society. Confucius was
born into a noble but impoverished family, during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. His
moral system is based on empathy and understanding and on three concepts: “li”
or ideal action, “yi” or honesty, and “ren” or human compassion or empathy.
According to Confucianism, a good and fraternal life could only arise in a
caring and disciplined society which values
tradition, duty, morality and public service, as well as believing in
the strength of family loyalty, ancestor worship, respect for elders and family
unity. There should also be consistency between words and deeds of each citizen
and especially those that hold the responsibility of power. This is what good government should be based on.
This school of thinking is closely aligned with Taoism and Buddhism (the
first one as the connection of the “one” with all things and universal beings
and the second to teach the virtues of good conduct) making philosophy, a
subject reserved to a restricted part of the Western intelligentsia, deeply
entrenched in the popular mind. Then, in the 20th century, the democratic
ideals of Sun Yat-sen arrived as well as the ideas of the new Socialist
democracy, set out by the CCP.
During this period, China introduced political science as a new paradigm
that questions the dogmas of History: one country, two systems. No system of
Western democracy has ever been so far in terms of institutional policy, and
democracy at the level of the dualism in the State itself. Hong Kong and Macau
are original forms of pluralism, which cannot be reduced to the monopolistic
model that established two politically similar parties. The author of the
article in Time magazine calls it a
"hybrid model of quasi-state capitalism and semi- democratic
authoritarianism".
The 56 nationalities of China have
considerable political autonomy not only in the preservation and teaching of
their language and culture, but also by electing their own representatives.
And, contrary to what has been put about by western public opinion, education,
health services, support for the handicapped and women's rights, respect and
care for the elderly, are an integral part of the constitutional rights and
social welfare especially in the last 30 years of the Republic.
Chinese international policy,
accused of pragmatism, aims to develop friendly relationships with all
countries, based on the five principles of peaceful coexistence: mutual respect
for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression,
non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, equality and
mutual benefit, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
The
new China promotes a policy of peace, free trade and technical and educational
scientific exchange, which is today the essential condition for the progress of
educational systems.
| Critique of
anthropocentrism and ethnocentrism |
The critical perspective of anthropocentrism considers the
Judeo-Christian culture to be responsible for the arrogant attitude of the
human domain against other species and nature. The concept of humans elected by
God to direct the divine creation and its moral perspective would induce them
to take over nature for their purposes, without any limitation or restriction.
The Rationalist enlightenment, which relies on humanity to succeed over
obscurantism and an ecclesiastical and aristocratic society, as well as
decipher and control the forces of nature, would open the way for unrestrained
use of natural resources and emerge in a contemporary age of environmental
crisis. We believe that this
relationship is not linear and immediate.
Christian philosophy understood
the existence and preservation of creatures as an extension of the task
of their creator.
At the same time, we might be tempted to consign the new tendency away
from the vision of a wholly natural world to positivism and scientism, despite
the peculiar ways of philosophical currents trying to reconcile metaphysics
with scientific laws of the universe. Here, also the relationship with the environmental
crisis is not directly and historically decisive.
We believe that the exploitation of natural elements for commercial use
is associated with the birth of the ideology of world capitalism, which, in the
late nineteenth century, contributed towards advances to existing frontiers of
commerce, sharing, in the Berlin Conference of 1885, the partition of colonial
spaces and virgin lands, and accomplishing their integration in the sphere of
the European and American metropolis. The natural resources and man, woman or
child, elder, masterpieces of God's creation, were transformed into a
merchandise which reduced the human condition to the status of mercantile
"workforce".
A new ethic (or non-ethic) emerged slowly from the beginning of 16th
century rural capitalism to the 18th and 19th century
industrialization: the denial of a sacred nature and human condition, in a
context of a capitalist economy.
Stripping off the stigma of medieval Christian censorship and fearless
of the purgatory that was born in the beginning of modern capitalism to redeem
them, it was postulated that everything is permissible and legitimate to
accumulate capital. This procedure, to obtain more capital by increasing the
concentration of industrial and financial capital, becomes “natural”, pervading
the whole legal order of the State and the spiritual and cultural environment
of all nations, as well as proclaiming the new relationship between production
and exchange as the end of social history,
the pinnacle of progress and civilization, and therefore to be eternally
reproduced and expanded by the future evolution of society.
This tremendous social change generated the modern culture and
engendered roots of different ideologies, philosophical schools and aesthetic
currents, not mechanically but dialectically, and not as mere reflexes of
superstructures of a new economic foundation of society. The protests against
cosmopolitanism re-evaluated the role of the countryside, generating doctrines
of nature conservation, from scientific or metaphysical inspiration and
searching for its contemporary synthesis.
To localize the critical perspective of the environment philosophy
towards ethnocentrism, we use the definition of the anthropologist Jorge Dias:
"Ethnocentrism is an emotional approach which considers and judges other
societies by the criteria sourced from its own culture. It is easy to see that
this attitude leads to contempt and hatred of all ways of life that are
different from that of the observer. "[1]
Environmental education:
the origin and international relevance of the UNO Stockholm conference 1972, to
the education reform in the 20th and 21st century
Let us start by avoiding the exhaustive critical analysis of the world
conferences on the environment, which are very well known: from Stockholm in 1972, to the successful
completion of Rio de Janeiro in 1991 and the global failure of Copenhagen in
2009. We should highlight, however, the report of the first Conference, which
represents better than the others, the actual political dimension of the
environmental crisis, and also the contradictions and limitations to overcoming
it without changing the dominant mode of economic production and its system of
power, the global capitalist market and
its systems of liberal democracy. We have
not forgotten the same environmental errors committed in the USSR and other
socialist republics.
Take as a reference the testimonies of Ward and Dubos, 1972. They were
important in modern environmental education, and their content served as a
guide for the Stockholm Conference, where the environmental issue was formally
recognized by the United Nations, through the following Proclamation:
"...The United
Nations Conference on the human environment, held at Stockholm from 5 to 16
June 1972, and attentive to the need for
common criteria and principles that offer to the people of the world,
inspiration and guidance to preserve and improve the human environment. It
proclaims that:
1. Man is simultaneously
the product and craftsmanship of the surrounding environment, which ensures
material sustenance and provides the opportunity to develop intellectually,
morally, socially, and spiritually. The long and laborious evolution of the
human race on this planet has come to the step where, in consequence of the rapid
acceleration of science and technology, mankind has acquired the power to
transform, in innumerable ways and on an unprecedented scale, everything that
surrounds it. The two elements, natural and human, which have been created, are
essential to human well-being and the full enjoyment of their fundamental
rights, including the right to life itself.”
The work of Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos, which created the foundations
of the “Report On The Human Environment”,
and was analyzed at that Conference, remains quite unknown, even to
specialists in this area, which is why it is important to state these strong
lines.
The introduction gives us an account of various controversies regarding
the severe problems and priority measures and establishes the principle that …
"… man has two
homelands, his own and planet Earth."
It establishes the objective of the Conference, to define environmental
problems and models of behavior that will ensure the development of
civilizations.
The report is organized into five main areas: the unity of the planet,
the units of science, the problems of technology, the developing countries and
the Planetary Order.
Firstly, let us analyze the civilization heritage of humanity up until
the current model of social order. Man is re-seated in his natural context of a
relationship with all beings and the human condition considered in full
physical, mental and social development, recognizing the need to enjoy all the
benefits of civilization, of health and welfare, education and of living in a
world of peace and equilibrium with it and with the rest of nature.
It establishes a dividing line with ethnocentrism which enhances the
productive and technological development of China and India in the 14th
century, when compared to Europe. By the 17th century, Europe had gone through a historical acceleration of the
development of society, based on its heritage of classic culture and history,
from the uninterrupted growth factors such as demographic growth, the increased
consumption of energy, food and minerals and the migration from the countryside
to the city, which would reach a turning point in the 19th century, through
exponential progression.
On this basis, the imbalance between the biosphere and the technosphere
continued to grow, with the man at the center of the conflict.
They begin to question the contemporary process
of development of science, in the sense of
"increasing dissociation and specialization", they
welcome research to find new syntheses
and alert society to the need to find them in the context of the
multidisciplinary study of natural systems and bring up questions about the
ethical value of exaggerated levels of production, consumption and violence,
which had come to our society, returning to Francis Bacon for whom the new gods
were already…
"… the idols of the
marketplace and the idols of the tribe ".
They weigh up the price of
prosperity in environmental terms and examine the current features of the
globalization of the market and its relationship with the sovereignty and the
role of the State, regretting that two centuries have passed before attempting to
define a new "social contract" regulating the irresponsible
functioning of the economy, whose generalization and reform in favor of a new
global equilibrium they advocate, either in the form of socialist economic
planning or through mixed systems and civic and political participation.
These general ideas will be developed throughout the next sections and
will lead to final proposals, framed in a political solution for…
"… the tragic and growing divisions between the rich people of ‘the
North’ and the impoverished people of ‘the South '.
This originated from the political transformations that occurred in the
19th century, with the consolidation of nationalities, the expansion of colonial
empires and the sharing of the world.
"International politics remained, in fact, at the point to which
they were led by the interior
development of the 19th century.
Henceforth you will need to evolve towards a community founded on a more
systematic sharing of wealth (through progressive taxing, generalization of
teaching and education and through appropriate programs for housing and
hygiene) or otherwise plunge into revolt and anarchy. Many of the proposals
that are made today for development aid, presented by international
institutions, are the first test of an appropriate system to safeguard the
planetary community. "
These proposals, in a framework of new ethics, are imposed (also) by the
threat of the extinction of life by pollution and by the menace of chemical or
nuclear warfare...
"…Today, we can only expect to survive if our precious diversity
remains intact and in a condition to generate a fundamental loyalty towards our
planet Earth, this unique planet, so beautiful and so vulnerable. "
In the second part of the report, devoted to the drafting of a new
scientific view on the drive, unpredictability, continuity and interdependence
of the cosmos, the concept of ' plasma
', will be introduced which has helped us to understand the origin of the
universe and the conditions that generated on Earth the conditions to generate
and conserve life: water that cooled down the temperature of the planet and
shaped its crust; organic carbon compounds, sources of life; the atmosphere of
oxygen and ozone, protectors of life, photosynthesis, the basis of the cycles
of carbon and oxygen; the creation of the biosphere and the Cambrian explosion
of life in the complex, vulnerable and unpredictable process of adaptation and
natural selection, that has generated up
to the present time an increasing biodiversity and natural diversity, in
unstable equilibrium.
In the third part, the discontinuity of development, the problems of the
expansion of consumption, concentration of production and exchange, depletion
of resources that accentuate the problems of pollution and social inequalities
on a global scale are considered. Here they introduce new perspectives to
address the social costs of the economy, such as the environmental costs, at
the time almost systematically ignored and socialized, through pollution, the
destruction of the soil, while life support and cultural landscape, the crisis
of urbanism, the destruction of habitats of the rural world, the preservation
of wilderness, and rebalancing resources according to the real needs of
humanity as a whole through management,
conservation and clean energy resources, the promotion of environmental quality
of life and an integrated policy for social justice and international solidarity.
The fourth part is dedicated to examining the situation of so-called
developing countries, whose concept encompasses various environmental and
cultural realities, from ancient civilizations to the countries that have only
recently acquired an independent status. The report focuses on developments
caused by the "green revolution" that occurs in the 1960s, the
potential for employment and production but also assesses their contradictions,
mainly as a result of abundant use of agrochemicals, urban sprawl and
population explosion in these countries, the new ecological problems born of a
growing industrialization and creating political and social conditions
favorable to the allocation of benefits.
The last part equates the creation of a new international order, through
a fair and proper management of the biosphere, with international control and
correction of the dysfunctions in the environmental atmosphere, oceans and
climate and proposes the reform of the technosphere - world system of technological innovation,
investment and trade, pointing out the peaceful solutions and negotiating
conditions for the establishment of a strategy for the survival of humanity and
the Earth, our common home.
"But now, the idea of establishing these strategies through an
authority, an action and adequate resources still seems strange, visionary and
utopian, simply because the world institutions are in no real sense of
planetary community nor any commitment in this regard".
His philosophical stance about the human condition is clearly inspired
by the ideas of Konrad Lorenz.
Absent from the Report is an analytical perspective on how the concept
of Nature evolved in other cultures and civilizations, namely in the oriental
and Hispano-Arabic cultures.
At this point, as in the framework of the United
Nations international ties, the key problem is political and social, because it
implies forging new relationships of power-sharing and a radical change in
society, in their mode of production and in the civic awareness (culture and
ethics) of citizens and their political leaders, economically and socially.
Environmental dumping in
the economy
The Social State helps not only the impoverished
citizens, but also the bankers in crisis and socializes losses caused regularly
in private economy by their activities, especially the environmental costs.
National accounting systems and enterprises do not include, as a rule,
the values of natural resources and the degradation of the quality of life,
considering only a fully functioning system of production and circulation of goods. There are generally negative impacts
on the biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere (depletion of
resources, reduction of biodiversity, environmental degradation, destruction of
ecosystems, etc.). In short, it does not assess what is not immediately
expressed in terms of quality and non-monetary values, which, even in the
strictly economic plan represents costs and value expression, distorting the
actual productivity of economic systems and the relationship between productive
and absorbed flows, not considering biological and physico-chemical indicators,
landscape quality, etc
The reference work of the land ethic belongs to Aldo Leopold (after Walt
Whitman and David Thoreau and the transcendentalism of Waldo Emerson, John Muir and G. Pinchot,
pioneers of rational management of forest and environment and George Perkins
Marsh), which came from the studies of Darwin and the scientific advances of
ecology.
The feeling of needing help and defense, developed throughout the
process of natural selection, spawned the concept of the Community, basis of
the ethic. But it is a new conception of nature that emerges, now understood as
a society of plants, animals, minerals, fluids and gases, closely linked and
interdependent.
“The (usual) land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing
privileges but not obligations. A Sand County Almanac”, page. 238. “All ethics
are based on a premise: that the individual is a member of an interdependent
community. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to
include soils, water, plants, and animals, or, collectively: the land .“ page
239
Biocentrism (d ' Earth first!, Greenpeace, Wilderness Society (...)
assigns an intrinsic value to any living entity and Ecocentrism focuses on the
duty which we owe to the biotic community that we are part of. The question is
not applied to new objects, such as nature, pre-existing moral theories. Nature
shall be included in our field of moral reflection; our duties, before limited
to human beings, shall be extended to other natural ones… The concept of an
enlarged community to include the natural ones. Conservation is a state of
harmony between men and land…” page 243
“Plants absorb energy from the sun. This energy flows through a circuit
called the biota, which may be represented as a pyramid consisting of
layers…The species of a layer are alike not in what they came from, or what
they look like, but rather in what they eat…The lines of dependency for food
and other services are called food chains…The pyramid is a tangle of chains so
complex as to seem disorderly, yet the stability of the system proves to be a
highly organized structure. Its functioning depends of the co-operation and
competition of its diverse parts.” pages 251 e 252
Soils depleted of their storage, or of the organic matter which anchors
it, wash away faster than they form. This is erosion. Waters, like soil, are part of the energy circuit. Industry, by
polluting waters or obstructing them with dams, may exclude the plants and
animals necessary to keep energy in circulation…”page. 255
“The image commonly employed in conservation education is «the balance
of nature»..this figure of speech fails to describe accurately what little we know about the land
mechanism. A much truer image is the one employed in ecology: the biotic
pyramid. “ page.. 251. “Poundage or tonnage is no measure of the food–value of
farm crops; the products of fertile soil may be qualitatively as well as
quantitatively superior…” page. 260. And this is the ecological consciousness,
(duty to nature).
The "ethical of
responsibility"
Gaia hypothesis
The Earth as a super live organism, creator of
its own biodiversity. Lovelock suggests climate history as one of the main
arguments in favor of this approach, considering the surface the main producer
of the life agent, generating an atmosphere for at least three million and a
half years in support of the existence of living beings.
In recent critical essays Sagan manifested a growing pessimism and
critically pointed out the stress factors of environmental crisis, without
abandoning his belief in the healing role of science and new technologies,
stating his belief that the threat of universal tragedy will contribute to
understanding between people and nations and to a new alliance between science
and religion.
In the name of the principle of equality, the two authors refuse the
concept of the superiority of the human species, which they compare to racism,
for violating that principle and censoring the
human non-recognition of the capacity of feeling and suffering of
animals. In their works they claim that the animals should not be subjected to
suffering and Regan also adds that they are protected by law, by which they are
entitled to a life experience that has intrinsic value.
The expansion of the concept of person: “I propose the use of 'person',
to be rational and self-conscious, to incorporate the elements of the popular
sense of human beings that are not covered by members of species Homo
Sapiens“.(Peter Singer, Ethical Practice, chapter Take the lives of animals,
pp. 98/99, 1989/92)
In the cited work of Peter Singer we can also read, on page 233, the
complaint regarding effective aid that the rich countries of the North pledged
to grant the poor countries of the South: only Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway
and some Arab countries that export oil reached the modest objective set by the
UN, 0.7% of gross national product.
They make it clear that there exists, between hunger in the world and
the brutal killing of animals a standard common model of civilization: the
consumer society and their amoral production and exchange of merchandise
Scientific discoveries confirm that the balance of ecosystems favorable
to life depends on a multitude of physical, biological and geological factors
and recognize that the higher the position occupied by organisms in the food
chain, the greater their vulnerability, and that the destruction of some
species dramatically affects the entire system.
What is dramatic today, as per the law of bronze of paleontology, which posits the irreversibility of
evolution, is the gathering rhythm of the loss of biodiversity, the destruction
of natural energy resources and the multiplication of the effects of pollution
that reach not only the whole lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the
atmosphere and the biosphere, but also, with unforeseeable consequences, the fundamental genetic material, the DNA which
conserves and reproduces the codes of life.
And nobody can imagine today what will be the link in the chain of life
or where the evolutionary curve will jump, as nobody dreamed before that the
grandfather of our human condition was an insignificant rodent that survived
the widespread extinction of dominant species at the end of the Mesozoic Era. (
251 million, and 65 million and 500 thousand).
We can consider ironic the idea that the present day humans are this link
but hopefully, said Konrad Lorenz, we are the link between the animal
and the truly human man!
A step forward in the understanding of the new ethical principles may be
made with reference the works of Kant, Marx and Lévi Strauss, who defended
these principles in different periods, but did not find the social and
environmental historic conditions for
their full realization.
From Kant: every man shall be taken as an end in itself and never as the
means of attaining another end.
From Marx: from each one according to his possibilities and each one
according to his work. To each one according to his possibilities and each one
according to his needs.
From Lévi Strauss: the true humanism does not start with itself, and
puts the world before life, life before man and respect for others before self love.
See below how the beautiful poem by the Portuguese poet Jorge de Sena
interprets those three principles in the context of the general crisis of our
civilization and in the environmentalist ethics
perspective.
At the dawn of the 21st century the economic machine lost its wheel
regulator: it passed successively from the hands of large industrial concerns,
to the banker, to the neo-liberal or socialist State, then to massive
multinationals, and now supersedes the nations and international treaties, to the
nebula financial corporations protected
by off-shore banking.
Globalization has become visible to all citizens but its crisis factors
have acquired an enormous complexity.
Here is a set of extremely important and serious questions, which must
be included in the concept of environment: that scientific progress in the
interface of traditional disciplines and the environmentalist conscience, impel
to an ethical dimension.
But such facts, and the dissemination of environmental movements and
doctrines alone, do not undermine the anthropocentric perspective.
The recognition that plants are part of the
basis of the food chain and chemical transformation of solar energy required
for the production of food or carbon minerals reserves, or biodiversity
conservation or soil are essential to prevent the breakage of the chain or prevent the effects of
desertification, can lead only to the definition of a new utilitarian finalism,
proceeding with new technologies to "clean" the selection and
manipulation of living organisms for commercial consumption, rationalized
within the limits of human knowledge on the interaction of factors of
environmental crisis and the dynamic equilibrium of ecosystems..
But, in fact, it is not possible to determine precisely what is the carrying
and renovation capacity of various ecosystems, for example, when confronted by
the annual rise of hundreds of new chemical compounds, whose environmental
impact is unknown or is insufficiently studied; the environmental regeneration
with new technologies against pollution will be always a more expensive
solution, being preferable an environmentalist strategy for development which
gives primacy to the reduction, after the re-use and recycling, as the last
choice.[2]
Being sure that the revelations and complaints
of environmentalists, could also unlikely generate, attitudes and the defense
of extreme ecological values in confrontation with the classical humanist
values. [3]
The imperative ethic of
dignity, by Jorge de Sena
Nowadays, all doctrines and ideologies revising principles and main
objectives face the development of the environmental crisis and of a new civic
consciousness based on interdisciplinary, scientific discoveries and the
analysis of the limits of technological progress as well as new social
movements.
The social combat that seems to emerge from the foundations of the new
environmental ethics philosophy, is a program to a world where the primacy of
ethics prevails over the politics. These politics currently adopt the single valid
principle: that the means justify the ends.
The primacy of ethics over the justice of class which announces the end
of history and, as the natural order of
things, the triumph of social exclusion; and the primacy of ethics in the
bloody history of all civilizations.
A simple sentence could summarize this political program, which no
society has yet owned up to, as the result of joining democratic and socialist
utopias with environmental ethics.
“Believe me that no world, that nothing nor anyone
is worth more than a life, or the joy of having it.
This is what is the most, this joy.
Believe me, the dignity that
will tell you so much
is nothing more than the joy that comes
from being alive and knowing that at any time someone
is less alive or suffers or dies
for which one of you resists a little longer
until death that is for all and
will come.”
Jorge de Sena, Letter to my kids
about the shootings of Goya
After the writing of these thoughts, hundreds of philosophy works,
especially on ethics, became unnecessary and long-winded.
But they particularly disturbed owners of power and created a new
dilemma to all activists and militants of the social causes, which previously
Engels (and, later, Gandhi and Nelson
Mandela) tried to solve in his reflection about the role of violence in
history. How do the legitimate defenses of a human being, of a class or a
nation, justify the sacrifice of a human life, if it is single and unique and
is the price of our triumph and survival?
China’s responsibility
The "market socialism" of China holds a serious environmental
problem, caused largely by the use of coal and aggravated by the negative
environmental impact of the exploitation of 17 "rare earths", the raw
material of cutting edge technologies. But it is not certain that China carries
the greatest responsibility for the pollution of the world, even though it has
now surpassed the US as an annual CO2 emitter. This responsibility falls upon
the US, which produced 28% of CO2 in the atmosphere, followed by Europe (20%)
and then China (8%). But in 2007 the index of China's pollution per capita is
about one-fifth of the average American pollution(19.4 T) and slightly more
than half of European pollution
(8.6 T). In this framework, the Western political powers must assume
their responsibilities for the failure of the Copenhagen Summit, to negotiate
(and to reform its economy and way of life), not only with China but also India
and other countries. There should be a goal to keep back and reduce global
warming in all countries and increase progress in all Nations. Note that the
income per capita in China (2008) was still only 3,253 USD and in a country
like Brazil 8,320 USD, reaching 37,600 USD in Japan, 61,220 in Luxembourg and
44,642 in the USA (2009), which raises a terrible dilemma for Chinese leaders
and people: their legitimate desire to reach modern levels of prosperity must
be reconciled with the protection of nature and its finite resources. China
needs to change the environmental conditions of its development, because the
phenomenon of global warming will mainly affect Asian countries dependent on
the conservation of glaciers in the Himalayas, which feed the large sacred
rivers, the Ganges or the Yellow River and provide 2/3 of their water for
agriculture and human consumption. Inside the ideological struggle and in
relation to society, the priority is to fight against corruption, while dealing
with demands for high qualification of technicians and leaders, decreasing
pollution and increasing the ecological conscience between youth and the
political and scientific elite (see the testimony of Al Gore, in his movie
"An inconvenient Truth”).
II.
The main coup strategic direction
The integration into the democratic and
socialist schools of hundreds of thousands of new students increases the chance
of school failure and of students
dropping out of school without achieving secondary educational levels. The
scientific and technical revolution increases the risk of school failing to keep up with society.The world today has
become more interdependent and global problems require a current ethical view
of all fundamental issues of economy, science and politic, because this
problems affects not only the present but the future of humanity and our
planet, threatened by global warming, the disarray and breakdown of the
capitalist financial system and
biological and nuclear holocaust warfare. This requires a continuous
learning process among teachers. The in-service training of teachers is the key
to the success of the modernization of the education system and the success of
its social mission and must include not only the scientific and pedagogical
dimension, but also the formation in the domain of the new environmental
ethics.
In Portugal, this task was entrusted to three
types of Teacher Training Centers (Centros de Formação de Professores):
1_ Regional Teacher Training Centers which have
the advantage of knowing better the
local territory education and teaching needs of teachers; 2_Training centers of
Scientific and Professional Associations of teachers, which have the highest
standards, and are qualified in the specific didactics of curriculum
disciplines; 3_ Training Centers of Universities and Polytechnics, which are
the most advanced institutions in the field of culture and scientific literacy.
This plural system, with their training
centers, trainers and consultants, training classes, is certified by the Board
of Scientific and Pedagogical Training for Teachers, which is appointed by the
Ministry of Education. After gaining
qualification, all training officers do their job independently.
The experience of the past twenty years has
led to preference being given to modes of training classes such as Workshops
and Seminars, Projects and Study-Circles,
those that directly influence the immediate pedagogical action of
teachers, while the Courses and Modules are used more in general training.
Funding is provided by the Central
Government, but the training centers of scientific associations and
universities also offer training courses that are paid for by the teachers
themselves.The Teacher Training Center of Conimbriga (Cefop.Conimbriga), is
organized to provide a training program based on the experimental teaching of
Sciences, starting a new interdisciplinary paradigm. This is administered through
the study of educational territories, visiting museums and science centers,
monuments and landscapes; conducting interregional and cross-border activities.
Training for all teachers in environmental ethics has also been introduced.
Schools, teachers and other professionals of education. What initial and
continuous training do teachers need in the coming years?
New Paradigm: multiculturalism and interdisciplinary Scientific Experimentation in the laboratory
and in the landscape.
E-training, but in the context of specific didactics. Improvement of the
English language in this context.
History of national language and culture, in provincial, regional, Asiatic
and international context.
Fundamental concepts Mathematics. Works and authors in the national language
and culture. Integration of the perspective of environmental, literary and
artistic and scientific education (encompassing all areas of scientific
culture), in the continuous training of all disciplinary groups.
Training and study visits, internships and participation in national,
provincial, regional, Asiatic and international conferences, for all teachers.
Quality and equity. How do students
learn more successfully?
Education and citizenship: Skills of citizenship must be acquired by all
students in universal basic education
Frederick Schiller, in his “Letters about the Aesthetic Education of
Human Beings”, argued that "the student must learn to follow an objective,
and, for the sake of this objective, to tolerate a painful way. He/She should
aspire early in life that for pleasure most noble, effort is the price
". Victor Weisskopf, a pupil of
Niels Bohr, comparing the art of scientific diffusion to "… a sweeping
interpretation of Beethoven´s sonata
…" advocates its highest social
recognition. Also on this subject, the teacher and pedagogue Fernando Bragança
Gil, who was deeply knowledgeable about the realities from international
experiences on scientific literacy, warned:
"Without denying the relative importance of playful aspects in
science education, I believe that solid learning, requires some effort of
understanding and retention by he/she who learns."
_ Attitudes:
_
Regular work from the 1st grade, with the spirit of intense
dedication to continuous study, cooperation, empathy and respect for teachers,
auxiliary workers and technical
education and colleagues, based in the
foundation of the discipline of modern school, built on duties required in
order to acquire rights.
_ Values:
Critical
conscience challenges anthropocentrism and ethnocentrism. National identity,
without chauvinism, integrated national and regional cultural context, in
Asiatic and world citizenship.
The
creation of cooperative work groups, from
all levels of classes, with a view to monitoring literacy and new
technologies of information, assembly
teachers, students and parents info-instructed.
Create
parallel curriculum in education-training, from the end of the first cycle and
targeting secondary education for the training of qualified professionals, with
common scientific curricula but also regionalized according to the needs of
business development and administration
Knowledge and skills:
_ To learn how to organize a search and design objectives for the same
propose.
_
Info-training. And learning the English
language, in this context.
_
History of national language and culture, but in a provincial, regional,
Asiatic and international context
_
Fundamental concepts of Mathematics and Sciences, national and regional
language, integrating the perspective of environmental education in a literary,
artistic and scientific (encompassing all areas of scientific culture) context
in all cycles of education. Strengthen the study of mathematics in the 1st
cycle and physical education.
III.
A new scientific paradigm for science and civilization
and the significance of the new environmental ethics
The paradigm of scientific and technological expertise, based on the
myth of unrestricted growth, has suffered frequent challenges through which new
approaches to relations between the environment and progress have erupted, and
from where the concept of sustainability has emerged, with an interdisciplinary
scientific value but also a dimension of social ethics.
But we do not say that the modern environmentalist philosophy represents
the triumph of community consciousness and
ethics of life over the indifference and the horror of our time, meaning
only that it is against the moral emptiness, barbarism and social indolence
that it raises its voice, refusing to die, reviling the nonsensical and the
night of our civilization, and penetrating all walks of human thought and
culture, obliging the reinterpretation of the more conservative texts, the
sacred books of all religions and the way of understanding their doctrines,
bringing into question the main political nineteenth century ideological
paradigms, offered to our century: Marxism and Liberalism.
Let's see what the Unesco World Report recommends on education in 1991:
"Two aspects of scientific and technological revolution in progress influenced
strongly the teaching of science and technology during the past two decades:
First the fact that a large amount of scientific and technical progress has
been made now in multiple traditional interfacing disciplines and secondly the
existence of a reciprocal relationship or symbiotic relationship between
science and technology, scientific progress giving rise to new technologies …
thanks to them science can again thrive.
These particularities of recent developments of science and technology
have facilitated the trend, observed a little everywhere in the world, during
the two past decades, to teach science and technology in an integrated manner
…. "
IV.
What are the scientific production models that we must solidify and create
to support the economic and sustainable development based on an informed
society?
Universities
have evolved throughout the twentieth century to a functional model of
formation of specialists, progressively integrated in their polytechnic
structures. This process was developed to the detriment of another primary
function of University: scientific research.
With
the emerging knowledge and an informed society, scientific and technical
revolution and global finances and business concentration, it has become even more imperative to restore the social function of
public University in its role as center of excellence of fundamental scientific
research.
The
foundation of basic scientific research is the formation of research groups,
with professors, PhDs or those who choose the path of a doctorate in line with
the scientific objectives they wish to pursue and not mere academic
requirements and administrative career progression. These researchers may originate from all universities and
congregate around a mission and purpose of scientific research.
The
results of this research must be returned to the University and society through
the pursuit, in parallel, of the teaching function.
Creating
a scientific elite, framed by the public University, they can correspond to the
national interests and put at the service of the country, its economy and its
population, the results of advanced research, that tends today to be
appropriated by the large business conglomerates, through the registration of
patents, products and brands.
In reality, what allowed the development of the so-called Western
civilization was the integration of science into culture, leading to a way of
thinking and acting rationally, which constitutes its main feature. FBG
(Fernando Bragança Gil, Portuguese researcher, ECSITE and Sciences Lisbon
Museum creator).
As you can see in Figure 1, the school is no longer alone in the center of
transmission of knowledge, as was the case since the Middle Ages, with convents
and monasteries running schools and after by the Church’s control over the
University, which stretched until the 19th century in Europe. Above the school,
newspapers, radio, television and now the multimedia and Internet are gaining
importance.
The media cannot be considered only as business areas that do not have the
social duty to contribute to education. The school should be able to use the
modern mass media to fulfill its function.
Figure 2. 4 dimensions of
teaching and learning
Figure 2. represents, first, the
existence of a hidden curriculum in all systems of transmission of knowledge
and learning, whose influence on education
we must study. For example, on social networks like Facebook or the most
popular sites such as YouTube, schools must select and produce information with
scientific and educational value, and orient students to this demand and
selection of information that is relevant and is certified.
The schema on the right shows that currently the three systems in the West
are badly synchronized particularly as social
communication does not play the complementary role it should in the educative
process. The relationship between formal education (schools) and organic
structures of non-formal education, museums, interpretation centers, parks, is
still sporadic and practically limited to very specific study visits..
In 2000 the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly adopted recommendation
nº1437 on Non-Formal education "urging those that shape educational policies to take notice of non-formal
education as an essential part of the education process …" and
"interviewing Government and other competent authorities of the Member
States to recognize non-formal
education as a partner in the
process of lifelong learning".
In 2003, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe "recommends
to Member States belonging to the European Cultural Convention:
“... reaffirm that
non-formal education/learning nowadays constitutes a fundamental dimension of lifelong learning, and so work for the
development of standards for effective recognition of non-formal
education/learning as an essential part of general education and vocational
training and, in particular, for the qualification of professionals and volunteers responsible for the
offers of non-formal education/learning;
- the quality of learning provided
- the monitoring of progress in learning made
by participants in the programs of non-formal education/learning, both
individually and as part of a larger group. "
This guideline has been adopted by the European Commission which in 2004 acknowledged “in the context of the
principle of lifelong learning, the
identification and validation of non-formal and informal learning aim to make
visible and enhance the entire range of knowledge and skills held by a person,
regardless of where or how they were acquired. The identification and
validation of non-formal and informal learning takes place inside and outside formal education and
training in the workplace and in civil society".
In Portugal we can identify a large number of educational practices
associated with non-formal education made largely by civil society
organizations and which take various forms, outside formal education. We emphasize
the museums and science centers (in
the sense of ICOM enlarged definition)[4].
This non-formal education is complementary
to the formal education system and should be developed in articulation with the formal and informal
education.
This type of education, although implying
as much effort as formal education, appeals particularly to the
awakening of scientific curiosity, creates
a taste for experimental study and
provides joy of discovery.
The objectives and methodologies of educational practices of non-formal
education - observation, participation
and inter-activity to promote
scientific literacy - take into account the development and the personal
experience of educating. Therefore it provides the appropriate framework to
respond to the aspirations and needs of the learner, as well as to develop
their personal skills, boosting their autonomy
and creativity.
Developing this reserve of
potential, skills and experience in individual learning through non-formal
education will also answer to the needs of modern society and the labor market: society information,
scientific knowledge and cyber culture, citizenship and the deepening of
democracy and transnational mobility.
Mc2p, Association of Science Centers and Museums of Portugal, proposes to
gradually take over an important part of the effort regarding the dissemination
of scientific culture, making a virtual
turntable from school and e- learning, and the basic structure of non-formal
education, in cooperation with universities, schools and educational
institutions, business, public administration and "last but not
least," the media.
Within formal education, new training centers called "new opportunities”
were created, from primary schools and secondary vocational schools with
alternative curricula for adults who have not completed compulsory schooling
and whose acquired skills and personal culture are taken into account,
establishing a course curriculum more simplified to obtain their academic
degree.
Schools, Teachers, Media
_ The public media should integrate into its
programming the role of citizens’ education and complement the public school programs.
_ The private media, in the context of licensing
processes, must be obliged to promote civic education and culture.
_ Using the sources of public and private funding:
community programs and the national budget, non-profit associations and
commercial banking operations, partnerships and initiatives, steps should be
taken, with local, regional and national financing and credit lines, to
provide the ideal acquisition for all
school students - a portable computer.
VI.
On this basis, this communication tries to make a contribution to
establishing a strategic pilot plan to win the challenges in Chinese-foreign
cooperation in running schools and design a model of transnational exchange
education on educational policies and practices.
1. Considering the different levels of development of provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities of China, Exchange model must necessarily be diverse and flexible, so that exchange
programs can be organized with the developing countries and with the more
developed countries.
2. The Exchange must be based, firstly, on the training of teachers:
teachers from other countries should be invited to visit China to organize
seminars and courses with Chinese teachers, bringing their experience and
knowledge and Chinese teachers should be sent on study missions and training
activities in those countries.
3. The training and study visits need not be prolonged, for economic
reasons, but also because communications through the Internet, and
video-conferences allow us today to maintain a permanent interchange, with
reduced costs.
4. Universities and teacher training institutes, training centers of
Chinese teachers, can establish direct and bilateral relations with
institutions in other countries, leading to the twinning of schools and a
regular link, with pedagogical exchange and study visits that can be extended
to students.
5. The results of the exchanges should be available in digital format,
at national, provincial, regional and municipal levels, using cyber space.
Revised
at the 01.03.2013
[1] Jorge
Dias, “Studies in Anthropology, Volume I, A historical introduction, PG. Portuguese
Ethnography” 219, published in 1961.
[2] The publication of “Silent Spring”, by Rachel Carson, in 1962,
placed in the centre of environmental scientific research the problems of
pollution and “ecological failure “.
[3] Holmes Rolston III, Philosophy
Gone Wild, 1986. J.B. Callicot, In
Defense Of the Land Ethic, 1989.
[4] ICOM, Statutes, Art. 2º (b) In addition to institutions
designated as "museums" the following qualify as museums for the
purposes of this definition:
(i)
natural, archaeological and ethnographic monuments and sites and historical
monuments and sites of a museum nature that acquire, conserve and communicate
material evidence of people and their environment;
(ii) institutions holding collections of and displaying live specimens of plants and animals, such as botanical and zoological gardens, aquaria and vivaria;
(ii) institutions holding collections of and displaying live specimens of plants and animals, such as botanical and zoological gardens, aquaria and vivaria;
(iii)
science centres and planetary;
…/…
(v) nature reserves;
…/…”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário