Panel Response: Premises for Inter-Faith Dialogue

Weaving

Cultural Harmony and SolidarityBy: Prof. Victor OrdonezSenior Education Fellow, The East-West Centre It is not my role today to give an overall framework or keynote address on the very important theme of this conference. But rather, as a panelist, to provide you with a few specific ideas that may be helpful in deliberating on today’s sub-theme: “weaving cultural harmony and solidarity.” For this reason, I have chosen to present within my limited time only five key concepts that I hope may serve a building blocks for our discussions on this theme.

Let me say from the start that this session finds itself at the heart of why we are here today.The overall symposium theme, “Cultivating wisdom; harvesting peace,” articulates the very core of UNESCO’s, and my, understanding of the way to achieve peace. For peace is not just the absence of war, but something that can be harvested only after something else has been planted, and that is, an understanding—a frame of mind—in every individual that enables him or her to tolerate, accept, deal with, indeed celebrate cultural and religious diversity. As UNESCO’s oft-quoted preamble states, “Since war is made in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be built.” And that is merely another way of saying, if we are to harvest peace, we must cultivate wisdom.

And so allow me today to contribute five specific building blocks to the defenses of peace in our minds, or to change the analogy, to contribute four seeds of wisdom for cultivation in oureducation systems and in ourselves:

1. The first idea is a way of resolving the dilemma of religious conviction vs. religious tolerance. I was brought up as a Christian Catholic, and for many years I grappled with two seemingly contradictory ideas: On the one hand, I was taught that my religion was the true one for salvation, and therefore it was unacceptable for me to think that one religion was as good as any other. On the other hand, I was told that my God was a God of all mankind, and I could not see how He could condemn todamnation, as some of Christian faiths do, the three fourths of the world’s population that were not Christian.

My crisis resolved itself in a most curious and experiential way. As a graduate student, I had decided on majoring in oriental philosophy, which I thought morerelevant to me than all that Western thought. So I embarked upon writing a doctoral dissertation on one aspect of Hinduism. Because I had to understand mysubject profoundly, and from the inside, I ended up absorbing the ideas, and indeed living the lifestyle of a sect of Hinduism. It came to a point where a religious identity crisis or sorts arose—Was I now a practicing Hindu, and could I still be a Christian at the same time? Not only practices, but also basic beliefs and world view elements from the two major religions kept colliding with each other in my head—reincarnation vs. resurrection, karma vs. heaven or hell, etc. But I eventually realized that both faiths had intellectually coherent and internally compatible thought systems, and contradictions arose only when I would pit a specific idea or belief divorced from its context in one religion and measure it against the thought system of the other religion, which was definitely unfair. I therefore concluded that the world in its naked and complex reality is too blinding to explain itself, and if one looks at the world to understand it, one needs a set of “glasses” or filters, with which to make sense of it, whether it be Christian glasses, or Hindu glasses, or Buddhist glasses, or even atheist glasses. This resolved three things for me: First, it made me see the unfairness of evaluating an article of beliefin another person’s world view, if one were looking at it with a different set of “glasses.” Secondly, and more importantly, I made me realize I needed to make a firm and committed choice of which “glasses” I would choose to wear; perpetually shifting glasses would only make me cross-eyed or even blind. Thirdly, it allowed me to resolve the dilemma I originally mentioned: I could truly say that according to my “glasses” I had the best and true faith, but I could respect and understand those with “glasses” different than mine.

2. The second idea is the idea of multiple identities. Perhaps no concept, no word, is as overused these days in conferences as globalization. Nevertheless the reality of ever-greater interdependence is an irreversible tsunami. How we prepare for it, how we channel it, how we allow it to determine our lives and our school systems, however, is not predetermined. Indeed, as the Delors report reminds us,

We cannot ignore the promise of globalization nor its risks, not the least of which is the risk of forgetting the unique character of individual human beings. It is for them to choose their own future and achieve their full potential within the carefully tended wealth of their traditions and their own cultures, which can be endangered…”

Indeed it is the context of maintaining the balance between tradition and modernity, between the global and the local, that fostering the concept of multipleidentities is so crucial. In maintaining the balance between these dimensions, education must avoid the pitfall of looking at this polarity as a zero-sum game, that emphasizing one aspect must be at the expense of the other. It is not a question,for example, of designing a curriculum that engenders international solidarity moreand national identity less, or vice versa. Paradoxically, if handled carefully, one can actually re-inforce the other. There are ways of course of developing national pride that can deteriorate into chauvinism jingoism or intolerance of all thingsforeign, just as there are ways of championing a version of globalization that belittles and tramples upon local and national identities. But these are not the only alternatives. Throughout the world, examples exist of sub-cultures equally proud of their ethnic and sub-national origins as they are of their national citizenship or even regional/global identity. There is no contraction between being totally proud of being Cebuano, and being equally proud of being Visayan, and of being Filipino and of being Asian. Thinking or teaching that one must be sacrificed at the expense of the other is a false dilemma, and denies the individual’s inherent multipleidentity, and leads to aberrations like ethnic conflict and intolerance (as can be seen in another part of the Philippines, for example).

3. The third idea is the distinction between faith and ethics, between a belief system, which varies from religion to religion, and a moral code of conduct, which in the main is common to all religions. One deals with the “how”: How to live or behave in life, the other deals with the “why”: why one should live that way—the motivation and frame of mind for following the moral code. Recent initiatives in educational system towards reinforcing values education in schools do not always make this distinction in their efforts. To be sure, how values education is handled varies significantly from country to country.

In some countries, many of who are the cradles of ancient civilization and thoughtsystems blending religion and philosophy of mankind, values education is inextricably linked with religious education. This is but natural, and its validity has endured through the centuries, giving individuals a frame of reference beyond the material and beyond the present tense, within a comforting socio-cultural context and a sense of social identity. It is only important that, as contexts and social identities alien to their own come into increasing contact with them, a healthy spirit of tolerance and respect for diversity matches their sense of their own social identity.

On the other hand, there are countries, many influenced by the Church-State dichotomy tradition of their former colonizers, where there is an attempt toseparate out from the educational system, not just religious proselytizing, but all forms of sectarian-inspired values education. The irony of course, is that it is impossible to not teach values education. Just as not to decide is to decide, so also not to deliberately engender a value system is to engender a value system that is indifferent to values, or confused about them. Ignoring or giving little importance to specific values, such as honesty and cleanliness, for example, engenders the opposite values or behaviors.

The practical question that arises for both sets of countries is: How does one deal with values education in a way that neither violates each individual’s personal belief system, nor advocates a specific configuration of values that are not universally upheld by humankind?

4. The fourth idea is a companion idea to the third: operationalizing the difference between teaching and preaching. The former is to enlighten, and basically address, the mind; the latter is to inspire and motivate, and basically addresses the heart and the will. Schools are not churches or mosques; classes are not religious revival sessions or liturgy. Values have a place in a program of study, but in aneducational context the emphasis on a deeper understanding of the concepts, the implications, yes, the value of these, not on the exhortation to practice them. Even in the great institutions of religious thought, there is the classical distinction between theology, which is the intellectual and rational analysis of the foundationsof faith, and homiletics, which is the cultivation of the facility to persuade, move, inspire, to transform abstract faith foundations into living allegiance and devoted practice. Hopefully, but not necessarily, practice follows understanding; nevertheless, without understanding, practice becomes less sustainable and reliable.

5. The fifth and final idea I would like to leave with you is the distinction between the secular and the materialistic. There is a strong temptation within schools in amulticultural society, and in public schools in church/state separation countries that are secular by definition, to confuse this, to think being secular must mean being materialistic. But there is a difference between being secular, that is, not being clearly aligned with any specific religion or sectarian affiliation, and being materialistic, that is, clearly disavowing any dimension beyond the sensory. Schools that are secular are not, and should not be, necessarily materialistic. But they can stay faithful to their secular, public, and democratic character if the values they embody and engender remain firmly within the body of those values universally accepted regardless of creed, race, or religion. The Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights, endorsed by practically all nations on earth and opposed by no major religion, is one of several starting points. Only when secular schools start to propagate a sub-set or interpretation of these values particular to a specific historical, religious, or philosophical tradition do they betray their secular character. These then, ladies and gentlemen, are the five ideas I wish to bring to our discussions, with the hope that they will trigger more dialogue and thought. I recognize that some ideas, and indeedthe themes of this symposium are complex, delicate, and to some people quite controversial.But this is so precisely because it is a subject of utmost importance for our troubled times, and cultivating the seeds of dialogue and understanding on these themes are more urgent today than ever before. No one has expressed more forcefully this sentiment than the report of the UNESCO Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, and I would like to end with the pertinent quote from that landmark document: Often, without realizing it, the world has a longing, often unexpressed, for an ideal and for vales that we shall term “moral.” It is thus education’s noble task to encourage each and every one, acting in accordance with their traditions and convictions and paying full respect topluralism, to lift their minds and spirits to the plane of the universal and, in some measure, to transcend themselves. It is no exaggeration on the Commission’s part to say that the survival ofhumanity depends on it. About the Author – Prof. Victor OrdonezCurrently working to formulate new program in Educational Leadership for the East West Center, based on collaborative sessions on new education paradigms for rapidly changing,interdependent societies; formerly with UNESCO, as Director of the Basic Education Division in Paris, then as Director of its Principal Regional Office for the Asia Pacific; he was Undersecretary, Department of Education Culture and Sports; Chair, Presidential Commission on Education Reform in the Philippines; he was visiting professor, UCLA; Dean of the Graduate Schools of Education and Business, De La Salle University, Manila.