Strengthening quality education and the building of intercultural competencies.

 

UNESCO is deeply committed to quality education for all, which means an education targeted at the learner, addressing his/her needs and aspirations and rooted in his/her specific social and cultural circumstances. Quality education should be primarily grounded on the respect for human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration and should equip the learner not only with knowledge and values to understand the other, but also competencies which are specific to openness and appreciation of diversity. UNESCO’s action supports the revision of the content of national textbooks, learning materials and curricula, taking into account diverse learning styles and life experiences, and cultural and linguistic diversity. Likewise, the role of the teacher in interpreting textbooks and developing learning materials that induce and prepare learners for dialogue, and teach them to think critically, receives high attention. An initiation into cultural diversity requires some intercultural competencies and skills, that is, the capacity to step outside one’s cultural logic and mindset, and the ability to adapt to diverse representations of the world. Perspectives, ideas and strategies are set out in the UNESCO Guidelines on Intercultural Education and Learning from the Practice of Intercultural Dialogue – An Analysis of Tools, Methods and Approaches.

Formal and non-formal heritage education is also crucial as it transmits knowledge and skills necessary to address the plurality of cultural heritage, and its importance for memory and identity, in particular for younger generations. The World Heritage Education Project represents an important strand of action, which aims to promote young people’s awareness of world heritage preservation, as well as reciprocal knowledge and appreciation of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. 

Quality education also means a linguistically sensitive education which aims to give mother-tongue instruction as a precondition to improve educational quality, by building upon the knowledge and experience immediately available; the knowledge of at least one of the national languages to anchor the citizen into his/her national context; and the knowledge of a foreign/international language, which should represent the normal range of practical language skills for a citizen in the twenty-first century