Global Issues

Vanessa Andreotti started a new thread this morning: Global Issues: Reading the World. The session in the morning was based on group work with different people reporting back on the result of their discussions.

In the first activity, participants were separated in three different groups to role-play three different perspectives on learning English. Teachers, parents and students put forward their arguments for and against English.

In the second activity, groups of three were asked to reflect on an ideal system and what element should determine what:

Natural System (Life and Resources), Social-Cultural System (Values, Behaviours and Relantioships), Education System or Economic System.

Here are the questions that were put up for discussion:

  • What characterises an ideal system?
  • What ´s the role of individuals in your system?
  • When will individuals be happy? Why would they work and study?
  • How will they relate to different cultures? Will they all think the same way?
  • Will your society change and how?
  • What is the role of education?
  • Who shapes what individuals want/wish for?
  • Who defines what a good life or a good society is?
  • What will happen with people who disagree with the majority? To what extent dissent will be “tolerated”?
  • To what extent will people have the right to determine what they want for themselves?

At the end of this discussion, participants were asked to reflect on how they feel abut this system and their role inside it – whether they are helping the system to remain the same or change.

Food for thought:

“Those of us who attempt to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening our own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. We will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of our own obsesssions, our agressivity, our ego-centered ambitions, our delusions about ends and means”. (Thomas Merton)

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.