CHAPTER I: THE BLINDNESSES OF KNOWLEDGE: ERROR AND ILLUSION ¾ THE FACT THAT EDUCATION, WHICH IS THE ONE THAT TENDS TO COMMUNICATE KNOWLEDGE, BECOMES BLIND BEFORE WHAT HUMAN KNOWLEDGE IS, ITS IMPACTS,
Chapter I: The blindness of knowledge: error and illusion ¾ It is very telling that education, which tends to communicate knowledge, remains blind to what human knowledge is, its dispositions, its imperfections, your difficulties, your tendencies to both error and illusion and do not worry at all about making known what it is to know. Conocimiento In fact, knowledge cannot be considered as a ready-made tool that can be used without examining its nature. The knowledge of knowledge must appear as a primary need that would serve as preparation to face permanent risks of error and illusion that continue to parasitize the human mind. It is about arming each mind in vital combat for lucidity. ¾ It is necessary to introduce and develop in education the study of the cerebral, mental and cultural characteristics of human knowledge, of its processes and modalities, of both psychic and cultural dispositions that allow one to risk error or illusion. Chapter II: The principles of relevant knowledge ¾ There is a capital problem, still unknown, which is the need to promote knowledge capable of tackling global and fundamental problems in order to register partial and local knowledge there. 1 ¾ The supremacy of a knowledge fragmented according to the disciplines often prevents the link between parts and wholes from operating and must give way to a mode of knowledge capable of apprehending objects in their contexts, their complexities, their ensembles. ¾ It is necessary to develop the natural aptitude of human intelligence to locate all its information in a context and in a set. It is necessary to teach the methods that allow to apprehend the mutual relations and the reciprocal influences between the parts and the whole in a complex world. Chapter III: Teaching the human condition ¾ The human being is at once physical, biological, psychic, cultural, social, historical. It is this complex unit of human nature that is completely disintegrated in education across disciplines and that makes it impossible to learn what it means to be human. It must be restored in such a way that each one from where he is takes knowledge and consciousness at the same time of his complex identity and of his identity common to all other humans. ¾ Thus, the human condition should be an essential object of any education. ¾ This chapter indicates how, from the current disciplines, it is possible to recognize human unity and complexity by gathering and organizing dispersed knowledge in the natural sciences, in the human sciences, literature and philosophy and showing the indissoluble union between the unity and diversity of all that is human. Chapter IV: Teaching earthly identity ¾ Henceforth, the planetary destiny of mankind will be another fundamental reality ignored by education. The knowledge of the developments of the planetary age that are going to increase in the 21st century and the recognition of the earthly identity that will be increasingly indispensable for each and everyone must become one of the greatest objects of education. Enseñar It is pertinent to teach the history of the planetary age that begins with the communication of all the continents in the 16th century and show how all parts of the world became intersolidary without thereby hiding the oppressions and dominations that have plagued humanity and that they have not yet disappeared. ¾ It will be necessary to point out the complexity of the planetary crisis that frames the 20th century, showing that all humans, now confronted with the same problems of life and death, live in the same community of destiny. 2 Chapter V: Facing uncertainties ¾ The sciences have made us acquire many certainties, but in the same way they have revealed to us, in the 20th century, innumerable fields of uncertainty. Education should include teaching the uncertainties that have appeared in the physical sciences (microphysics, thermodynamics, cosmology), in the sciences of biological evolution and in the historical sciences. ¾ It would be necessary to teach strategy principles that allow facing the risks, the unexpected, the uncertain, and modify its development by virtue of the information acquired along the way. It is necessary to learn to navigate in an ocean of uncertainties through archipelagos of certainty. ¾ The formula of the Greek poet Euripides that dates back 25 centuries is now more current than ever. “The expected is not fulfilled and for the unexpected a god opens the door.” The abandonment of the deterministic concepts of human history that they believed could predict our future, the examination of the great events and accidents of our century that were all unexpected, the henceforth unknown character of human adventure, should incite us to prepare our minds for expect the unexpected and be able to face it. It is imperative that all those who have the burden of education are at the forefront with the uncertainty of our times. Chapter VI: Teaching understanding ¾ Understanding is both a means and an end to human communication. Now, understanding education is absent from our teachings. The planet needs mutual understanding in every way. Given the importance of education for understanding at all educational levels and at all ages, the development of understanding needs a reform of mentalities. Such must be the task for the education of the future. ¾ Mutual understanding between humans, both close and strange, is henceforth vital for human relationships to emerge from their barbaric state of misunderstanding. ¾ Hence, the need to study misunderstanding from its roots, its modalities and its effects. This study would be all the more important since it would focus, not only on the symptoms, but on the causes of racisms, xenophobias and contempt. It would constitute, at the same time, one of the surest bases for education for peace, to which we are linked by essence and vocation. 3 Chapter VII: The ethics of mankind ¾ Education must lead to an «anthropo-ethics» considering the ternary character of the human condition, which is to be both individual ↔ society ↔ species. In this sense, the individual / species ethic needs mutual control of society by the individual and of the individual by society, that is, democracy; the individual ↔ species ethic summons terrestrial citizenship in the 21st century. ¾ Ethics could not be taught with moral lessons. It must be formed in minds from the awareness that the human is at the same time an individual, part of a society, part of a species. We carry in each of us this triple reality. In the same way, all truly human development must include the joint development of individual autonomies, community participation and the awareness of belonging to the human species. ¾ From there, the two great ethical-political purposes of the new millennium are outlined: to establish a relationship of mutual control between society and individuals through democracy and to conceive of Humanity as a planetary community. Education must not only contribute to an awareness of our Homeland, but also allow this awareness to be translated into the will to realize earthly citizenship.