Having been there; participating in the High Level Political Forum (HLPG) [1], while the world is about to enter a voluntary commitment towards the conservation of life, equality for all and sustainable development is a breath-taking life experience.
In spite of the glory of the historic moments, and the utopic 17 proposed goals, I must say that I had the impression that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) needed to have been more interrelated, and that they do not automatically link to the common stakeholders/right holders; perhaps due- on one dimension,to the sophisticated nature and language of the UN documents (as well as processes). It was the smartest intervention of all (proposed by the Women's Major Group) that women’s rights for equality must cut across all goals, in addition to standing alone in Goal 5. Actually with a broader vision, all goals need to cut across all other goalsand relate meaningfully to the current social structures (and concepts). Life is a complex multidimensional phenomenon and so must be our solutions to conserve it.
On Education and Communication
In relation to Goal 4 – that is “ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education”, as it related to all the rest of the seventeen goals.”
While ensuring the “appreciation of cultural diversity” (4.7), priority must be given to promoting the human rights of girls and women, in case values conflict. So much of the violence against women - including the horrific FGM, is culturally sanctioned and reinforced. This corona of sacredness we set around cultures must fall off. We surely need to keep respecting all people (i.e. each other) in their diverse beliefs, but not necessarily sanctify all cultures or beliefs as a result. Cultures need to evolve; take the good sides and leave the maladaptive ones as we grow and advance in civilization. Quality education must promote, above all, values of justice and stresses a sort of beyond-cultural-diversity approach to human rights.
My major concern is that social sciences have been (almost totally) disregarded in the GSDR 2015 (Global Sustainable Development Report 2015). The need for aligning objectives among stakeholdershas been overlooked as a result. The SDGs, as they are, will conflict not only with the current economic structures, but also many of the concepts steering our life organisation. How is this going to be addressed in terms of education and communication? Giving in to the dynamics of free market, and neo-liberalism, shifts the power from politicians to businessmen, and the later would continue to act based on a distorted interpretation of the "survival of the fittest" paradigm.* That's not because they are evil, but because this is how things seem to have been working well for decades. Have you ever heard a liberalist calling equality among people “immoral”? I have. Whether such a view is valid or invalid, how come that it has never been tackled in the GSDR 2015? Because social sciences are not science enough?
Education in the GSDR 2015 seems to be onlyabout development rather than sustainable development; tackling skills rather than ethics. What skills do we need to teach our children to stop violence against women or embrace the values of equality, tolerance or diversity? The term ethics does not even occur (significantly) throughout the report. Without communicating the evolutionary ethics behind the SDGs (which actually link them together) to all stakeholders, the SDGs might remain unattainable.
- This is also significant while addressing Goal 10:
While working to reduce inequality within and among countries (G10), It would be useful to acknowledge the fact that much of today’s poverty is not a result of lacking resources, but rather links to existing (well-established) cultural, economic and political structures dominating our life organisation(s). It is important for the purposes of education and communication to clearly identify a new era of a global solidarity for conservation of lifeand survival of our human kind,so as to advise all stakeholders of the significant transformation in case it conflicts with any existing systems or concepts.
Addressing such cognitive gaps, does not have to be all the role of the HLPF, but it requires –at least, acknowledgement and extra support to educational organisations working to promote the SDGs, and a focus on interdisciplinary holistic scientific research and publication.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *Although
Neo-libralism has not been frankly associated with the so called Social
Darwinism – and most of social Darwinists have not frankly called themselves as
such. But it was Herbert Spencer, a liberal utilitarian, who established the
“survival of the fittest” natural fallacy by trading heavily in the evolution
paradigm so as to explain how the liberal utilitarian logic of justice emerges
(Stanford Encyclopedia). للقراءة باللغة العربية
* Draft shared with several civil society world organisations earlier.
SSCC (Sinai Sustainability Cybernetics Center) is an IMS project that applies a multiple educational program related to the original natural self-healing system of life on earth. Education, sustainable development, social justice disciplines interact in a causal circular relationship that education would contribute to the development of the local community in Sinai village, on both sustainability and social responsibility levels while the community itself provides a unique learning environment that will contribute to the development of the educational program in a closed signaling loop.
InspirationGihan Soliman has been working closely since 2008 with several parties as an educational consultant and a social activist on relating education to sustainable development, citizenship and global citizenship in Egypt. Through several initiatives and discussions with the stakeholders in Egypt and the international community on education for sustainable development, and throughout her journey with educational reform venture in Egypt, she pointed out the compelling need to integrate sciences and technology to reach quality education.
Four years later, she met Maged Alsaid owner of Habiba Camp who has been working on sustainability in South Sinai through Woofing in Egypt and Dr.Waleed Sadek, an economic advisor and a social activist. She thought they are the perfect partners she’s looking to collaborate with on such a project while inspiring others around the world through their wide networks. In short, they developed together the initial agreements and a work plan.
Problem & Project
SSCC aims at boosting a continuously developing community in South Sinai which has been depending only on the regular kind of tourism which harms the environment and the cultural heritage. Regular kind of tourism also is not stable and gets affected by the political situation in Egypt as a boundary zone.
Thus, the educational center will be using the integration of Sciences, Technology, Maths and environmental awareness in providing parallel education for the students in Egypt whether in colleges or schools while promoting agro-tourism as a substitute for the regular tourism in Sinai that affects the natural resources while building a sustainable community based on organic farming, permaculture applications, sea water farming and renewable energy, in addition to the human dimension of solidarity and social responsibility. This will be achieved through partnership with the community and affiliates in Sinai with local and international educational institutions.Nowadays, sustainable development is a tough job ahead of those who are concerned about the future of the world. SSCC is a project that would have a positive impact regarding educational and sustainable development in South Sinai, Egypt while it serves as a model to copy elsewhere around the world.
We're going to meet with Gihan Soliman and
she's an educational expert. She's going to talk to us about the relationship
between education and sustainable development and she's going also to tell us
about what's called cross curricular activities.
You are an educational consultant and you
previously talked to us about the importance of connecting education to sustainable
development, could you elaborate more on that and tell us about the
relationship between sustainable development and education.
Alright, education is the key for sustainable
development as the UNESCO declared 2000.
Sustainable development is a pattern of economic
growth that takes the protection of environment into consideration, to fulfill the needs for the current generation, and also to preserve the rights to the
natural resources for the coming generations, which is the
"sustainability".
Speaking on the economy, you should also take into
consideration the biodiversity, the protection of the living organism on earth
, the natural protectorates that we have now, the natural resources, the
water pollution, the clean energy and issues like that. Now if you exclude that
while educating kids; what are you teaching them? are you teaching them pure
science?
Which they already sometimes hate !
Well
they usually do ! well as a kid.. why am I studying the periodical table? why am I studying all this science? why am I
studying math? and the answer usually is to get high scores to qualify for
college; to get a good job, but not the joy and the pleasure of studying and
practicing science and adding (value) to the
community. and here is my point of view - and it's (the concept) not new! The new is that I'm
coordinating for it; I'm taking action! I'm calling people to get together to
fulfill this vision. So while we're teaching our kids we need to relate the
information we're teaching to the real life and to (the) protection of (the) environment. If
we don't protect …. Well, the common notion is that the care for environment is
for the sophisticated people, the well-educated, and the cultured but actually
as I told you it relates directly to the economy. I mean if you take the coral
reefs, one square kilometer of coral reefs will have yield of 15 tons of sea food if you're talking about the
animals in the zoo how much they get to the economy, let aside the tourism, the
eco–tourism , the water, if you're discussing the availability of fresh water
to the rich to the poor and everybody; so again it gets back to the economy. So
it's not a sophisticated need although it relates also to value of beauty (aesthetics)*, the
green color, the blue, the sand, the color(s) of nature; we need to see beautiful
things around, that's a right too, but if we're taking priorities, we're
discussing economy! We're talking about green economy, if we don't make the
educational reform required for sustainable development, we're gonna soon lose independence and I'm not talking about armed forces and
weapons and everything .. well, at a time, a shirt treated with the Nano-technology
will be able to pick waves, record conversation and take pictures, how are we
gonna deal with that! I mean the owners of this technology whether nations or
organizations or regimes or whatever are going to be able to rule the world,
we're just gonna buy our food. So if we do not stop now and head for change and
aim for educational reform, we're gonna lose everything and this is gonna be
very soon.
(Part Two)
This is very important point that you're raising
and perhaps it relates to the issue of quality criteria or standards introduced
by some universities and schools in recent years but actually, most teachers
and university professors have complained that the quality criteria or
standards are not real, are not actual just something you need to do on paper
to get approval for or certified or whatever, is this true?
OK, I would say yes! And I hope no one gets mad
at me! I went through the experience of being a reviewer with the National
schools then I quit, I'm telling you as everybody else says, it's getting into
a compilation of papers and files, at one of those schools I saw the kids were
made to "sit in groups" ALL THE TIME . I mean they had to turn like that to be
able to see the board. They wanted to fulfill the standards, sorry to meet the
standards and fulfill the criteria for accreditation by obeying blindly what is
written on the paper so that was – I asked - that was "cooperative learning"! Well
I tried to explain that cooperative learning needs to take some part of the time.
Kids are being tortured by being made to sit like that! So again, the problem
is - speaking scientifically - the standards are built on basis of the American
Standards. The translated standards 2007 were the basis for the national
quality standards and you know they're totally two different systems. The
American system is not related to the government and there are no national curriculum..
there is "standards"; "national standards" but not a
national curriculum, so if you wanna do the same here and apply the same
standards here, it's disastrous. So what happens is that the people at
those schools are just trying to satisfy those reviewers. They will get those
files done, well written - the Egyptians are very good at that - writing files
and reports, but actually it's not happening; "quality education" is not happening, because quality will fulfill the students' needs to learn what is useful for
their lives and their future(s) . It takes curriculum relevance! Which is not
happening. The curriculum relevance is not happening!
Why isn't it not happening? Do we need more
coordination among ministries, governmental agencies the ministries of the
ministries of educations and other ministries?
Of course we do ! Of course we do; because this
is how curricula are designed, usually either by translation of foreign books or by exporting foreign books themselves
like in the international schools, the textbooks are ready made for you so why
look here and there, at the same time the information need for the teachers to
relate this curriculum to the environment are not there, databases are not available,
we do not know for example how many living organisms are there in Egypt! The
map is not available and each authority is presenting its own information
separately so together they don't make sense and no one is linking all these
things together, and so the next step is as you said is for coordination, for
the availability of information, for getting all the powers together but before
everything we need to have a unified vision towards reform.
And who's responsible for drafting this vision?
Is it our responsibility us as citizens, the government, who?
Well we need to push as citizens for this to
happen but when it happens it takes everybody, decision makers as I told you
before it takes the experts, the educational experts whether in the national system or the
international system, it takes the community itself; it takes the people to know
that change needs to happen and how this change is going to happen.
Part 3
….. how can you work on taxonomy for example if
you do not know the history of the scientists who made this taxonomies through
the ages, so you're studying history and at the same time you're studying
science. Again there is the nano-technology.
There is the nano science and the technology they get together to form the nano-technology. You get the laser for example
and how it affects everything, like
saving the cultural heritage for example. So we have to start practicing the
cross-curricular activities with a certain theme that relates to the
environment protection again, like for example, if you take water as a theme or water pollution then the social studies
teacher will be talking about the River
Nile, the water in Egypt and the international treaties related to this subject, and then the chemistry teacher will be talking about purifying water techniques, and then the biology teacher can be talking about taking samples of water,
examining the water in the lab and then the whole theme gets together and the students know how to make use of the
information they're toiling (for) and exerting efforts to learn and to memorize.
I believe one important thing is raising
awareness and you have told us that you lead several awareness campaigns to
raise awareness among children tell us more about it.
Well to be honest, we participated in campaigns,
we did not do it (all) on our own, because in a campaign if you're not along, you're
not heard well, so we participated in campaigns with other NGOs like Balady Port
Said and the Community Service NGO in St. Kathrine. We were asking for the elimination
of water pollution especially in Port Said area because the pollution there is
huge. It's a very serious issue there and people are getting really sick. Fish
are dying. We're losing the treasures of fisheries there and so we made a
campaign .. we called it Egypt's Waters Warriors and we published that in an
international paper in Macedonia and we keep reporting water problems in Egypt
as part of our campaign, we were with children at the schools and adults and everybody
in the street asking or calling that "Our Environment is Our Life"
We were earlier chatting about what happened
after the revolution regarding education could you tell us something about it ?
Well as I told you, the revolution is now
calling for change and people are ready for change, the problem is that it
takes a lot of coordination as I told you ( would you remind me of?..)
We were talking about exactly, coordination
among several entities and you said that this started to happen after the
revolution in a way that did not exist before.
Now we have the support of the Ministry of
Agriculture, the support of the Ministry of Environment through individuals like
the head of the training unit in the Agriculture Ministry, not through protocols
and formalities but they are supporting us, they attend our forums and meetings, they will speak in our conference and we need the support of the Ministry of
Education, we are ready for providing training. Before; we were focused on
building the model, I mean if you're talking about a vision that people cannot see, then you're doing nothing; you're wasting time and effort! The focus was to
build the model. We worked with schools that asked for our consultancy. We
worked with them and built that model and we documented everything those events
for two years (World Water Day, the activities, the cross-curricula activities, and we made forums for raising awareness; about food security, about healthy
food, about nano-technology, even scientific illustration: we were giving free
workshops by a prominent scientific illustrator, and so we make that as a model
and then the next step is cooperating with the different ministries and as I
told you we need to "recycle human resources" not to start from
scratch, to customize these curricula instead of building them up from scratch,
we don't need that because the pure science is there, the information, the
knowledge
We don't need to re-invent the wheel!
That's true, we are not re-inventing the wheel.
We are not coming up with something new, we're just coordinating for reform, we
have the experts that when (they) sit together they're able to build the model
that everybody needs (curricular design) and we are ready for training teachers,
we do that already but I mean with the
national teachers, with the national school teachers; we would do that .
Do you coordinate with local agencies like the
national council for motherhood and childhood? Do you coordinate with the
Ministry of Trade and Foreign investment? We need to prepare the kids for the
future so what kind of coordination?
Yes you're right about the authorities that
you've mentioned as being part of the change, but we have not dealt with them
yet. But the conference is a call for coordination and we are going to call
everybody, just everybody who is concerned, and I guess - like - all authorities are
concerned if we're changing the educational system and raising the awareness of
the people, we need everybody, and they need us too as representing the
community. And so we're making the call just for everybody and the outcome of
the conference will be information for everybody. Open source; a website that
has the input of the experts when they sit together and start working together
and also the school will create model lessons and we're gonna train
them (here in Egypt), it's going to be for free but we're not gonna be able to reach for other countries in the
region right now, but they are being called to attend as well. So we're gonna offer a training the teachers are going to able to create, and the students as
well will be able to create databases about places in Egypt and the Arab region
where students can go and learn things about the environment and the cultural
heritage, you have place in Egypt …. Someone told me that he made a Google search on the museums and they were
like 6000 and most of them are for free, now do we have a map for that? we
don't !! Do we have a map that would help teachers to relate science to
biodiversity? We don't !! So this is what we need to come up with at this
conference and this can only be the start. We don't know how people are going
to respond but it can be the beginning and we're gonna go on with
it, and again we do it as self-sustainable (project). Well if we get fund fine, if we don't then it's (still) going to go on because it is held by the
concerned people and stakeholders, people with interest in making Egypt a better
place and making the region a better area for us.
Ms. Gihan Sami Soliman, educational consultant
and president of International – Curricula Educators Association, thank you
very much.
