ICE Menu
FORTY-SIXTH SESSION OF THE
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EDUCATION

"Education for all for learning to live together":
contents and learning strategies - problems and solutions

             Geneva, 5-8 September 2001             
 Netforum
What is
the ICE?		 Project
BRIDGE
Background information Parallel events & Press releases
Working Documents National
Reports
Final report & Conclusions Messages of ministers of education

Background information

General introduction
Institutional framework
Context

General introduction

Some ten years ago, in a book with a rather provocative title, ‘Educate or perish’1, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, an African historian, thinker and professor, described the dilemma of modern Africa (not to mention the rest of the world): there is no alternative but ‘to educate’ and to do so rapidly and properly. « Our entry into the Third Millennium is marked by upheavals that call into question the certainties of yesteryear and will therefore oblige societies to reinvent the meaning of life, and to create the foundations of a world ready for action.’2 We have now entered the third millennium. Is not the dilemma still valid? ‘Is it better to live together in the twenty-first century or to parish?’ Is this not the vital stake over which an education of quality should aim to triumph?

The theme adopted for the forty-sixth session of the ICE places the matter of ‘living together’ at the centre of the debate. There are in each of UNESCO’s Member States:

  • problems: the first step is to identify them, to accept them and to share them;
  • but there are also solutions: to share them, to spread knowledge about the best practices, and to evaluate the possibility of transferring them into other contexts represent an indispensable second step.
   

The main objectives of the forty-sixth session of the ICE will be:

  • to examine and to discuss in an open and profound manner those aspects connected with the quality of education for all;
  • to launch a new phase of international dialogue on the contents, methods and structures of teaching.
     

In terms of outcomes (or of products), the Conference should enable us:

  • to identify controversial questions or the lessons to be drawn on the subject of educational contents and methods;
  • to adopt the Conclusions and proposals for action allowing the policy dialogue to be intensified and the methodology to be enriched, so as to progressively develop individual and, above all, communal competencies enabling us to adopt short- and long-term perspectives on these questions, thanks to greater efficiency, effectiveness and participation on the part of high-level decision-maker.

With its themes reflecting those of the recent World Forum on Education, and the responsibility of honouring the commitments undertaken in Dakar, the Conference is also intended to be innovatory in its organization and dynamic. The context of UNESCO gives it a global dimension and it should draw the greatest possible benefit from what represents its real worth: the inter-regional dimension, by which means each region may benefit from the experience of the others.

1. Educate or perish : Africa’s impass[e] and prospects. Dakar, Senegal, UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Africa; Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire,: UNICEF West and Central Africa Regional Office, 1990.
2. B.H. Haïdara and S. Adoveti, Preface to Ki-Zerbo’s book

[ICE Menu - top of page - Contact us]

Last update: 27-10-2005