SUPRANATIONAL FACTORS OF COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT AND THEIR ROLE IN SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES AT ALL LEVELS
E.M. Malitikov, Chairman of the Interstate Committee for Knowledge Dissemination and Adult Education, President of the International Association «Znanie»
The Commonwealth interrupted a disastrous process for 10 years. It contrasted it with a peaceful, civilized, diplomatic and balanced style of relations between nations hungry for sovereignty.
Long live the Commonwealth!
But it is not easy, even impossible, to cope with the mudslide without costs, losses and erroneous risks.
But even here, objective statistics confirm that the CIS has a positive balance in relation to the results that could have formed without its appearance on the geopolitical map of the world.
The CIS has responded to the challenge of time, has given the opportunity to reflect on the turbulent processes, and some of them have even turned into a laminar flow.
Everyone had time to enjoy the independence, to understand that it is not the only indicator of a country’s well-being.
There was time to realize the necessity of transition to mutually beneficial variants of cooperation in the fateful and common for every country processes. It was an opportunity to calculate options for the future decades in advance and to discern joint geopolitical priorities in a globalized world. It was the time to understand that momentary interests do not correspond to a wise long-term strategy. Complex contradictions in different spheres of interstate relations, first of all in politics and economy, unresolved conflicts, aggressive nationalism and armed conflicts and terrorism that arise on this ground are typical not only for the CIS. Not at all.
Chronicles mention more than 5.5 thousand wars in the history of mankind.
The world began to talk about the unsustainable development of life on Earth at the end of the last century.
In search of ways of recovery of the world community the UN adopted «Agenda 21», in which it set a task and recommended 458 governments, international and national NGOs to look for new ways of partnership for realization of principles of sustainable development.
The global tendency to reconsider the philosophy, arguments and tools of social development formed the basis of another UN decision «Sustainable Development of Mankind — Program for the XXI Century».
It is these UN documents were the basis of the initiative of several CIS countries and the reason for the creation in 1997 by decision of the Council of Heads of Government of the CIS Interstate Committee for the dissemination of knowledge and adult education. Recently Georgia and Ukraine sent their representatives to the Committee in the high ranks.
Adult education in the above-mentioned decisions of the UN puts forward as a major factor of social development at the heart of sustainable development. The Fifth World Conference of UNESCO in Hamburg in 1997, adopted the Declaration and recommended that the governments of all states to consider adult education as a priority of public policy.
Leaders of the G8 in 1999 in Germany and in 2000 in Japan in the adopted Declaration and Communiqué reaffirmed this formula.
At the Millennium Summit — General Assembly of the UN Heads of State and Government agreed on the need for state and political support for lifelong adult education in the era of transition to the information society.
Leaders of the world law and order listened to the conclusions of the World Bank studies that the production component in the national wealth of a superpower and a small island state is equally small — no more than 16%.
The planetary balance of human resources is as follows: 880 million people are totally illiterate, 4.5 billion lack modern knowledge. Is this not the road to planetary catastrophe?!
The situation is worsening, because the knowledge on the planet is renewed annually by 15%, making those who lag behind intellectually bankrupt already in two years.
We are talking about adults, including all ranks up to the presidents of states.
There is a growing worldwide understanding that the formula «Lifelong Learning» should be replaced by a «Lifelong Learning» mentality. Although the price of such a redistribution is 6% of the gross national product.
Allocating a share of the budget to each branch of the national economy, and considering the cost of adult education as an investment in production at each enterprise, we can cope with this difficult task.
So do the world’s largest multinational corporations in the bitter struggle for global export markets.
Without a competitive adult education system there can be no competitive workforce, and without the latter there can be no competitive economy.
Education becomes a separate independent supertrade in the world, because the crucial decisions in the development of the world community are the sole prerogative of the adult population of the planet,
Adult education is not part of the basic traditional budget and constitutional education.
It consumes almost no funds from state budgets, turning 2.5 times more money than the total public expenditure on basic education.
In many countries of the world adult education has already become a supranational industry, with international, European, Asian, African and other continental regional structures of management and distribution. It — the youngest and most promising industry on the planet and it has the power to change the dangerous trends in the CIS and the geopolitical map of the world.
The main thing is to form in the public consciousness of the need to never interrupt one’s education during life. It is important to support this constitutionally, politically and legally:
— it is important to ensure the equality of all types of education before the law, the right of citizens to be educated at any age;
— to create prerequisites and laws for this;
— Encourage the developing network of non-state educational institutions and structures that generate funds outside the budget to finance educational activities.
We must help people to change their profession and workplace at the lowest cost in the event of unfortunate circumstances.
The world has done away with the idea of investing only in the economy. Investing in people and increasing their education is more important for economic prosperity.
Adults are mediators between the past, present and future. Adult education today is the most valuable resource in the face of an uncertain future.
We all need to understand new truths. The roots of conflict in the CIS and around the world and inadequate understanding of what is going on. The seeds of war mature from uneven and unequal development.
Preventing hatred is in education and knowledge.
Competence and education must be integrated into all actions of the leadership and policies of states in order to confront formidable problems, conflicts, contradictions at all levels.
The conclusions we must draw are:
— The first ingredient of political stability is an informed citizenry;
— the first ingredient of economic progress is a skilled worker;
— The first ingredient of political justice is an enlightened society.
Education is peace-building. It is the most effective form of its protection.
Investing in education yields a far greater return than any other.
A global family of educated and learning adults makes no strategic mistakes.
Today the world is ruled by unconscious ignorance of people, by incompetence.
At the same time in the struggle for a place «under the sun» it is not customary to admit the lack of knowledge.
This is why we fool each other and society, replacing deep objective modern retrospective knowledge with subjective experience, intuition and emotions.
And these are the accompanying tools of modern development.
The traditional system of education will create an attitude of sufficiency of secondary or even higher education in the young generation, which, having grown up, is immediately doomed to wither away.
Generation after generation, misses its chance by neglecting deep retrospective knowledge.
We focus on the superficial issues of keeping afloat and ingloriously end our way, each in their own country with their imperfect knowledge of the world.
It is ignorance that has made the planet weaker than the contradictions that tear it apart.
We know a lot about the little things, but very little about the big things. What is needed is a reassessment of values. Not at the local or even national level, but at the planetary level. We are people of the Earth, not just our own ambitious regional society.