The new life

Publish date 20-05-2020

by Sandro Calvani

From Asia an educational lesson that thinks about tomorrow.

 

«We all have two lives. The second begins when we realize that we only live once ". In 2010, I read this Korean quote carved into the pedestal of a Confucius statue at the entrance to a high school in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Kathy Tae Lee, a Korean colleague, insisted that I arrive a day before the official mission. for the G20. It was very important for me to visit the high school where she had studied and that I would talk about international peace education policies to an assembly of students, a generation younger than her. A truly extraordinary desire; it had never happened to me before in official UN missions and it never happened to me again in my career.

 

By showing me the quote under the statue, Kathy explained to me that the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius (who died 2501 years ago) have had a profound influence on South Korea, so much so that the nation is called the most Confucian society in the world. Still today, the emphasis on family, personal improvement and respect for age and authority continue to play an important role in Korean life. For decades, education for peace from oneself remains a goal at the center of in-depth educational reforms, which also carry forward other countries where Confucian thought continues to have a strong influence, for example in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan. Continued reforms in the educational systems of East Asia, roughly every ten years, are driven by awareness of rapid and fundamental changes. They are often implicit in reform documents, but the common belief is that education is the main investment for the future of those nations. Globalization, transformation of the economy, technological progress, social inequality, generational difference, the growing China nearby, new public health challenges, are all phenomena that contribute to an unstable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future. And the reports of these months have shown the enormous order of magnitude of these transformations.

 

But Asian educational reforms were not designed to solve today's problems. Instead, they aim to train more resilient and creative people, therefore capable of facing the problems of tomorrow's societies. They begin by understanding the changes taking place in society and develop new skills for the future. In this way, the reforms take on an "aspirational model" of people's regeneration. Each educational reform in the five countries has chosen few priority objectives [1]. In Hong Kong: creating people qualified for a new era, so that they can thrive, being leaders of change in a society that is variable, restless, inter-dependent and sometimes confused. In Japan: creating people with great intellectual, moral (of personal values) and physical prowess. In South Korea: creating independent people with their own identity, ingenious people who create new well-being with new ideas; people who appreciate and develop cultures, starting from cultural literacy and pluralistic values; democratic citizens who interact with the world with a sense of community, together with others in the spirit of caring for and sharing common goods. In Taiwan: creating people rich in spontaneity, interaction, respect for the common good.

 

At the end of my visit to her high school, Kathy showed me another teaching by Confucius, on the back of the pedestal of the statue, therefore addressed to the students leaving high school: «If you think of next year plant a seed, if you think of the next ten years plant a forest, if you think about the next hundred years, educate people ».

 

[1] Source: Kai-ming Cheng, Advancing 21st Century Competencies, University of Hong Kong, Feb. 2017 © Asia Society

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