"One of the most important tasks of education is to transform the existing mutual dependency into voluntary solidarity. With this in mind, it is the job of education to help people to understand themselves and others better by giving them a better understanding of the world. Acquiring knowledge represents the first step towards better understanding the increasing complexity of global events and towards dismantling the uncertainty that they create. The next step is learning how to put facts into the right context and learning to cast a critical eye on the information flow in order to reach one's own independent opinion. It is here that education is more irreplaceable than ever before. Education serves in promoting a real understanding of the events, which goes beyond the simplified and sometimes biased view given by the media. A turbulent and changing world is developing before our very eyes. Education has to help everyone to become world citizens (...).

To this end, then, education should to make individuals aware of their roots in order to provide a framework in which they can determine their own place on the map. But education should also teach people to respect other cultures. Several subjects play a decisive role in this process. History, for example, was often responsible for strengthening patriotism by emphasizing the differences and making a big thing of superiority. The reason for this was that history lessons were not based on a scientific foundation. If, however, we were to confront the truth of the matter, that is, that groups, peoples, nations and continents are not equal, we would have no alternative than to look beyond our own little ponds of experience and recognize that other peoples are different and that they also have rich histories and cultures. Knowledge of other cultures leads to a situation in which people become aware of their own cultures but also the entire inheritance of humanity (...).

Education has to sow the seeds of a new kind of humanism. A kind of humanism that is strongly characterized by ethnic elements and whose focus in on knowledge of and respect for other cultures and the spiritual values of different civilizations. This would provide a more than necessary counterbalance to a globalization process that is purely economic and technology-based in nature! The feeling of having common values and a common fate is the platform on which international cooperation of every form has to be based (...).

It's no longer enough to make sure that every child is given a certain amount of knowledge as early as possible as a sort of capital on which it can go out to face the future. Each and every individual has to be given the opportunity to learn throughout their entire lives, to enable them to increase their knowledge, acquire skills and qualifications and to adjust themselves to a changing, complex and interdependent world."

[Learning: The Treasure Within. UNESCO report for Education for the 21st Century, published by the German UNESCO Commission. Neuwied; Kriftel; Berlin: Luchterhand, 1997, S. 40-41, 73]

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