Promoción de estilos de vida saludable

The developments in technology have caused the process of globalization to speed up, and most nations have become more culturally diverse. Although multicultural society refers to the concept of diverse cultural communities existing within one society/nation/world, it must not be forgotten that different peoples have different needs in terms of practicing cultural traditions. Within a multicultural society, the reality of diverse cultures has increased the need for cultural appreciation and understanding between different ethnic background communities. In the UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 29 (d) explains that education should be directed towards preparing children “for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin.”56That is, in a multicultural society, it is necessary for all different peoples to learn each others’ cultural knowledge, traditional values, and languages, while at the same time each individual people is practicing and learning about its own heritage knowledge. As the formal educational system is the most effective means of knowledge transmission, the ideas of intercultural education would contribute to this matter.

The development of school education has to simultaneously take into consideration the educational needs of all different peoples, and be able to help students adapt to ever- changing technological advancements, as well as enabling students to appreciate others’ diverse cultural knowledge through the sharing of culture. However, as the global political and economic environment grows increasingly complex, the axis of educational development around the world remains largely biased toward the needs of global dominant knowledge. Therefore, appropriate solutions have not been found to the problems of clashes between different peoples in multicultural societies. According to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, intercultural education has two focal points:

1) It is education which respects, celebrations and recognizes the normality of diversity in all areas of human life. It sensitizes the learner to the idea that humans have naturally developed a range of different ways of life, customs and worldviews, and that this breadth of human life enriches all of us.

2) It is education, which promotes equality and human rights, challenges unfair discrimination, and promotes the values upon which equality is built. (NCCA 2005:3)

In other words, intercultural education can provide students with the requisite communicative knowledge to cope with cross-border and cross-cultural phenomena brought about by globalization, becoming an important tool for bringing together students of different peoples so they can learn about each other.

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3.1.0. From an Individual to Diverse Groups

Young people should be enabled to appreciate the richness of a diversity of cultures and be supported in practical ways to recognize and to challenge prejudice and discrimination where they exist. (The Stationery Office 2002:34)

To encourage the younger generations to respect and appreciate the lifestyles and cultures of different peoples, it is first necessary to get children to recognize and understand the cultures of their schoolmates from different cultural backgrounds. In a multicultural classroom, if teachers use the world view of a single people (usually the dominant perspective) in helping resolve conflicts between students from diverse cultural backgrounds, the end result may be more misunderstanding and prejudice. Thus, to effectively prevent conflicts between students stemming from cultural differences, school curricula should reflect diverse cultural identities.

In multicultural schools, curriculum design must be able to meet the needs of every single student when it comes to learning about their own culture, in order to construct or reconstruct cultural identity and strengthen opportunities for self-esteem. The advantages such leaning opportunities can bring to students of varied cultural backgrounds can satisfy their curiosity for diverse cultural knowledge, and foster in them the ability to adapt to and appreciate different cultural knowledge. If we expand our perspective from a single school to the whole of society – from an individual to a people –when a student from a specific people is able to strengthen in themselves a specific collective cultural identity through the help of school education, this will help a people as a whole accept and be proud of their own cultural and cultural identity. One of the significant gains of imparting cultural knowledge through school education is a potential boost to a people’s collective cultural memory and cultural identity. To the non-indigenous students in the same classroom, the chance to learn about indigenous cultures or languages together with indigenous students can help students eliminate erroneous knowledge picked up from the media, textbooks, or society, thus rooting out incorrect ideas and cultural prejudices.

Intercultural education can be developed through both formal and informal education models. If both models can mutually support intercultural education, this will be an even more effective means of attaining the goals of this educational philosophy.

3.1.1. From Community to Nation

Indigenous communities may be segregated from the mainstream world in reservations, crowded into urban enclaves, or they may be living alongside members of the dominant people in the city. When compared to the overall national culture, indigenous cultures, world views, lifestyles will always be seen as being to some degree “different”. Colonists of bygone days attempted to eliminate cultural differences through cultural assimilation policies, but in reality this only caused more conflict between different peoples and greater destruction of the social order. Instead of assimilation, imagine if there was a mechanism for fairness within a country, which would allow each people the equal opportunity to enjoy their cultural life without prejudice, to share their cultures without

scorn, and to learn about other cultures openly. Such a world would surely have no conflicts between peoples or cultural discrimination.

Nowadays, despite the efforts of schools to educate students to care about disadvantaged peoples and respect and appreciate the cultures and lifestyles of peers of diverse cultural backgrounds, there remains a lack of opportunity to truly understand or know about different cultures. Additionally, teachers with insufficient or erroneous knowledge of non-mainstream ethnic groups’ cultural knowledge are making cultural discrimination and prejudice difficult to eradicate. Dominant peoples discriminate against and misunderstand the cultures of non-mainstream groups and indigenous or marginalized peoples distrust the dominant people. Such a lack of understanding leads to problems of ethnic conflict as well as improper modes of awareness, and under globalization’s increasing influence on the countries of the world, extant problems are clearly not abating, and may even be worsening.

UNICEF has described intercultural education as “a response to the challenge to provide quality education for all.”57 The term “quality” as mentioned here means that intercultural education is able to help students of different peoples learn each others’ cultural knowledge, lifestyles, languages and world views. However, the notion of one person getting to know another can be extended to the notion of contact and interaction between one people and another. This interaction could minimize conflict between peoples within multicultural countries. The most effective means of reducing conflict and misunderstanding is to know one another, and school education is the most directly effective model for this. Therefore, introducing intercultural education into school curricula occupies an important position in contemporary educational reform.

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3.1.2. Human Rights

In 1993, the UN World Conference on Human Rights was held in Vienna. Section 33 of the subsequent Vienna Declaration and Program of Action is as follows:

The World Conference on Human Rights reaffirms that States are duty-bound, as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in other international human rights instruments, to ensure that education is aimed at strengthening the respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The World Conference on Human Rights emphasizes the importance of incorporating the subject of human rights education programs and calls upon States to do so. Education should promote understanding, tolerance, peace and friendly relations between the nations and all racial or religious groups and encourage the development of United Nations activities in pursuance of these objectives. Therefore, education on human rights and the dissemination of proper information, both theoretical and practical, play an important role in the promotion and respect of human rights with regard to all individuals without distinction of any kind such as race, sex, language or religion, and this should be integrated in the education policies at the national as well as international levels. The World Conference on Human Rights notes that resource constraints and institutional inadequacies may impede the immediate realization of these objectives.58

From this declaration one general point becomes very clear: in order to put human rights into practice, education development needs further consideration and attention in the reality of diverse peoples living together in multiethnic countries.

Globalization presents a number of challenges to the United Nations in terms of its long- held devotion to the recognition of human rights in the countries of the world. In multicultural countries, the cultural backgrounds of the population are various, and the national origins of school students are diverse. To realize the philosophy of the United Nations regarding the securing of human and cultural rights for disadvantaged peoples (indigenous peoples and minorities), the adjustments and reforms that should be carried out by dominant governments and school education should include the abandonment of past advantages meant to solidify a single ethnicity (the dominant group), as well as measures imposed to oppress or neglect other peoples. Under the premise of equal status and respect for the aspirations of each people, dominant governments should take the equal focus on all peoples in every area of development as the chief basis for policy formulation, and promote school curricula that can help appreciation and understanding of cultures and lifestyles, so that all peoples can truly enjoy human rights.

Building a learning mechanism through which each people can gain mutual understanding of each other’s cultural knowledge, and fostering different peoples’ mutual appreciation, respect and acceptance for cultural and lifestyle differences through such a learning mechanism is an urgent goal that needs to be accomplished. The above- mentioned ideas fit well with the philosophy of intercultural education, and school education is the most efficient setting for promoting human rights. Therefore, introducing intercultural education in formal educational systems can realize the goal of mutual relationships on an equal footing between different peoples. This can increase mutual

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understanding between peoples and their cultural knowledge, and secure basic human and cultural rights.

Conclusion

High dropout rates, low academic achievement and low acceptance rates into higher education among most indigenous students shows that schools are not meeting indigenous educational needs. When the majority of indigenous peoples’ vocational choices are limited to labor class work and when the unemployment rate among indigenous peoples is far higher than the average rate of overall society, it shows that indigenous peoples have not had a fair opportunity to compete with the dominant population. When non-indigenous teachers and students believe that most indigenous students perform poorly academically because of laziness or low intelligence, it alerts us to the prejudice, misunderstandings and cultural discrimination existing among the peoples within a multicultural society. When a dominant government, in drawing up policy, continues to oppress and sacrifices the rights and powers of indigenous peoples in the name of the “overall situation,” it shows that indigenous peoples’ human rights are not being valued. When national governments are unable to apply the appropriate remedies to conflicts between peoples, then evidently, the dominant people lack sufficient knowledge and understanding of the “Other’s” history, culture and lifestyle. All such problems can be tackled through appropriate implementation of education: by introducing heritage and intercultural education in the national education curriculum, we will be able to realize a multicultural society in which there is harmony, equality, and mutual respect.