The utopia of lifelong learning : an intellectual history of UNESCO's humanistic approach to education, 1945-2015 (original) (raw)
Related papers
From intergovernmental to global: UNESCO’s response to globalization
Whilst there is an ever-growing literature on the economic and political aspects of ‘globalization,’ at present there are few studies analyzing how intergovernmental organizations have reacted to this phenomenon. This article aims to fill this gap by analyzing the response to globalization of UNESCO, one of the least studied organizations of the UN constellation. Addressing the global orientation of some of the current programs, this article shows how a recent re-evaluation of scientific humanism—the main philosophical framework contributing to the creation of UNESCO—has influenced both UNESCO’s self-understanding and its understanding of globalization. Scientific humanism is a philosophical utopia that couples the advance of scientific knowledge with the diffusion of a common philosophical framework and promotes a universal system of education in order to establish a global community. Based on the philosophical appeal of a culture of peace based on science, humanism and human rights, UNESCO’s representation of globalization represents an intriguing example of how our global future may be conceived and, to some extent, realized.
Unesco: From Inherent Contradictions to Open Crisis
Comparative Education Review, 1986
how built-in organizational contradictions can degenerate into a crisis that threatens the organization's survival. In the case of Unesco, we have a situation that is fundamentally contradictory but nevertheless stable over a long period and then suddenly degenerates into crisis. The process was actually years in the making, and its ingredients are many and of different natures. The organization still operates with its original constitution, although there has been more than a threefold increase in its membership and, therefore, its expectations of the organization. Its largest contributor, the United States, took relatively little notice of its programs and operations and appeared to be practicing a long-term policy of benign neglict toward the organization. The current director-general, a fervent advocate of the interests of the Third World, has combined a certain neglect of the interests of the organization's largest contributors with mismanagement of its financial, personnel, and programmatic operations. Unesco is structured to function in a classic double bind. Politically, it houses countries with very different, and often antagonistic, aims and ambitions. Its member-countries (161 until the withdrawal of the United States) represent the full spectrum of political, cultural, and economic practices. Structurally, there is a legal working majority that has practically no material responsibility for the organization's financial foundations. This structural contradiction works to the advantage of the poorer members, and it is to their advantage that it be maintained.
Imagining a transformed UNESCO with learning at its core
International Journal of Educational Development, 2011
This paper argues that key aspects of UNESCO's organizational culture are a major impediment to the realization of its important educational agenda. Drawing upon sustained observations over a four-year period, the paper describes the nature and consequences of UNESCO's highly ritualized and ‘inward-oriented’ work activities, especially the weak links between what happens at Headquarters and the realities on the ground in formal and non-formal educational frameworks worldwide. By establishing a more open, interactive and egalitarian organizational milieu, focused on collaborative learning and knowledge creation, accumulation and dissemination, this paper argues that these linkages can be tightened. A genuine learning-oriented culture at UNESCO would encourage professional empowerment, independent thinking, human resource development, greater dialogue and critical debate, and the creation and dissemination of quality publications. Thus, for UNESCO to regain its leadership role in the education world and effectively serve as a broker of innovative ideas and effective programs, it must overcome the stultifying tendencies of its current organizational culture and find ways to develop dynamic learning cultures both from without and from within.
Educational multilateralism in a changing world order: Unesco and the limits of the possible
International Journal of Educational Development, 1999
This paper provides a critical re-valuation of Unesco's work in education over the last five decades, updating this story to include the most recent decade of crisis and reform within the organization and within the United Nations more broadly. Drawing on interviews within Unesco, a wide range of Unesco documentation and secondary sources, the paper addresses two main questions. First, what can Unesco's 52 years of experience in the field of education tell us about the possibilities and limits of multilateral cooperation in education? Second, how (and how successfully) has Unesco adapted to changes in world order over the last two decades?
While there is ever-growing literature on the economic, cultural, and political aspects of globalization, there are no critical, up-to-date studies on its philosophical and ideological underpinnings. Vincenzo Pavone fills this gap in the literature by analyzing one of the most interesting actors operating on a global scale: the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). By discussing the relation between scientific humanism and the development of UNESCO, the author studies the relationship between UNESCO and the changes which have occurred in its self-perception, its identity, and its vision of globalization. The first part of the book discusses the emergence of scientific humanism among thinkers such as Bacon, Comenius, and the Puritan reformers, and goes on to detail its subsequent connection with the religious reformation proposed by positivists such as Saint-Simon, Comte, and Renan. Pavone also assesses the influence of both 17th and 19th century scientific humanism on the ideas of Julian Huxley, the founding father of modern scientific humanism and the first Director of UNESCO. In its second part, Pavone outlines and evaluates the role played by scientific humanism in the history of UNESCO by inspiring a conception of it as a truly global organization-a conception applicable to the first decade of its existence and revived after the end of the Cold War. The third part discusses the relationship between scientific humanism and UNESCO with respect to four of its programmes: the Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST), the International Bioethics Committee (IBC), the Dakar Framework for Action, and the Culture of Peace Programme (CPP). Based on a universal reform of education, the creation of a system of global governance, and the philosophical appeal of a culture of peace based on science, humanism, and human rights, UNESCO's vision of globalization represents an intriguing example of how our global future has been conceived and, to some extent, realized.
Knowledge Cultures, 2022
The Faure Report (1972), which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, is once again being celebrated for renewing the call for humanistic, progressive, and democratic approaches to education globally. At the time of its publication at the outset of the second Development Decade, the report helped to reassert UNESCO's authority as the lead agency for education in the face of World Bank encroachment and the rise of technocratic approaches. Today, Biesta (2021), among others, has offered the Faure Report as an emancipatory resource in the face of the OECD's assertive economic agenda for education. Unfortunately, when the Faure Report is re-contextualized within what was occurring geopolitically and within UNESCO at that time, it appears to be a woefully parochial, even highly counterproductive attempt. By empirically neglecting half the world, ignoring decolonial demands put forth at Bandung, and omitting UNESCO's own Major Project on Mutual Appreciation of Eastern and Western Cultural Values (1957-1966), the Faure Report functioned to ensure UNESCO would remain a channel for evangelizing Western Enlightenment Man, rather than a place for non-hierarchical dialogue and mutual learning. Given the explicit ambitions of the Report to link education and existential contemplation-'Learning to Be'-our critique not only shows how parochially ensconced the Report was but suggests generative alternatives that did-and still do-exist today.