UNESCO INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATION Hamburg, Germany Celebrations of the 50th anniversary Remarks by John Daniel, Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO It is a special honour for me, as a relatively new staff member of UNESCO, to be asked to speak on behalf of the Director-General at this celebration of the 50th anniversary – the golden jubilee – of the UNESCO Institute of Education. There is much to celebrate and I will recall some of UIE’s many achievements in a moment. But first, let me say thank you to those who have made the work of UIE possible and brought us to this milestone in its life. For the last 50 years, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany has been the financial mainstay of the Institute. In the name of UNESCO’s Director-General, Koichiro Matsuura, I express our deepest gratitude to the German government. German support has brought UIE to its current maturity. For fifty years the Hanseatic City of Hamburg has played host to the Institute and I offer our warmest thanks to this great city. UIE has benefited greatly from the generosity of the city government as well as the openness of the people of Hamburg. The University of Hamburg has been UIE’s partner in many important initiatives. The Institute has also benefited from the generous support of the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish governments. These governments all believe in the vital importance of adult education and have encouraged the Institute to facilitate international exchanges in adult education. It is a pleasure for me to thank all present and past members of the Governing Board of UIE. You have guided the destinies of the Institute wisely in good times and bad. We treasure your commitment and perseverance. Finally, I express our gratitude and congratulations to the present Director, Adama Ouane, to his predecessors, and to all the UIE staff for their conviction that they could help give lifelong learning and adult education the central role that they now have in contemporary societies. A golden jubilee gives us an occasion to review our accomplishments.  When couples celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, they like to show off their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Today is a time to reflect on how UIE has evolved through the years. Let me start by taking you back fifty-two years. It was UNESCO´s commitment to post-war Germany, expressed during the 5th General Conference held in Florence in June 1950, which led to the creation of the UNESCO Institute of Education. Along with two other special German projects (the Institute for Youth and the Social Science Institute), UIE was intended as a vehicle for promoting human rights and international understanding. Specifically, these institutes were meant to help "to resolve some of the fundamental sociological, psychological and educational problems hampering relations between the German people, especially German young people, and other nations". The Adenauer government was also keen on supporting UNESCO Institutes because, through UNESCO, they helped Germany to rejoin the international community of nations after years of isolation. For these reasons, the Institute's statutes of 1952 defined UIE's role as that of a focal point in Germany for contact with educationists from different countries. At the same time, the statutes also charged UIE with carrying out studies on the principles and aims of education, and the most suitable methods for it. How was this mandate translated into action through the years? The Institute’s very first undertaking was a seminar on 'adult education as a means of developing and strengthening social and political responsibility'. In his opening speech, Professor Johannes Novrup, the first Chairman of the Governing Board, described the Institute as a new experiment, which has been initiated because of the conviction "that the people of Europe, and of the world, must learn to cooperate, and that one of the roads to follow is to establish institutions of supranational character". He argued that "in the age of democracy, where everybody is supposed to feel co-responsible for social and political affairs, elementary schools do not suffice… and adult education is needed in order to make us understand the vast complexity of society today as well as open our eyes to the values of literature, art, and science and to give us a philosophy of life".    Citing the Danish adult educator Grundtvig in his thinking on the folk high school, Professor Novrup explained how education for citizenship, and for social, political and cultural development is at the core of adult education. To quote him again: "The folk high school must not foster blind fanatics but enlightened, conscientious citizens. It must endeavour to rouse consciousness of current problems, and stimulate interest in their solution by developing the powers of its pupils - powers of the heart as well as of the head - and thereby enable them to tackle them. Solutions themselves must not be given. Only then will their minds be really their own; only in this way will they, as independent and active men, be able to enter upon the life of the citizen…” Having just emerged from a war that had devastated Europe and its people, the participants in that meeting agreed that the urgent task for adult education was to help in the holistic development of people – as citizens, as lovers of art and philosophy, as workers and as individuals able to understand other cultures. While its inaugural seminar focused on adult education, the next UIE seminar looked at the development of the personality of pre-school children. Maria Montessori articulated her views on the role of education at this stage. This set a pattern by which UIE held a series of meetings on education that spanned the life cycle, from pre-school to adulthood. This embodied the principle of lifelong learning, which at that time was not yet part of common educational discourse. Meanwhile, starting in 1955, UIE collaborated with several UNESCO National Commissions to organize annual summer universities. These were aimed at promoting international cooperation in school practice. They brought young German teachers in contact with colleagues from other European countries such as Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. In the early sixties, the Institute was also asked to play a mediating role in establishing contacts between Eastern and Western Europe, demonstrating another facet of its mandate to promote international understanding. The analysis of UIE´s first 20 years shows that most of its activities and the participants were based in Europe. The key thrust was to promote understanding between Germany and the other European nations and their citizens. The evolution towards genuinely international cooperation and understanding was encouraged by the UNESCO General Conference of 1965, which decided that UIE’s Governing Board should include representatives of all regions of the world. Aside from reducing the number of Germans and other Europeans in the Board, this also implied a change in priorities. The Institute was asked to focus on comparative educational research on a broader international basis and urged to expand its activities to the developing countries. This shift only became fully operational in the mid-1980s when UIE launched its activities on post-literacy and continuing education in the framework of lifelong education. Prior to that, in the early seventies, UIE worked at operationalizing the principles of lifelong education with researchers from industrialised countries. So in the past 20 years UIE has gradually redirected its efforts to the developing countries and made its programs more relevant to their needs. At their heart was the post-literacy and continuing education program which was primarily directed at developing nations in the run up to the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA V). The CONFINTEA V conference was a high point of UIE´s existence as governments, NGOs and academic institutions acknowledged the importance of adult education and the critical role of the Institute in promoting it. The evolution in the thematic and geographical concerns of the Institute over fifty years reflects the creative tension in an organization that is continuously shaped by both external and internal forces. UIE’s fifty years have been marked by great moments and difficult crises. It is the story of an Institute striving to be relevant to changing times as it struggles to survive and develop. It is because UIE has both survived and developed that it is today making a difference to both developed and developing countries. We are here today to celebrate its continued existence.   Anniversaries are a time to both celebrate the past and look to the future. Education is at a critical crossroads as we begin the 21st century. By working on areas like literacy, language, women’s issues and gender perspectives, UIE has drawn on the experience of developing countries to enrich its frame of reference. The Institute is demonstrating its relevance to developing countries through its work to help them attain the goals of Education for All articulated in the Dakar Framework of Action. Those goals are demanding – but reaching them is the most important task of human development that our world faces. Almost a billion adults are illiterate. Millions of children, most of them girls, are not in school. Even those who have attended school discover that their classrooms have not equipped them to cope with the new demands of a rapidly changing world. Two of the Dakar goals, in particular, will keep the UIE busy in the years ahead. One goal aims to cut illiteracy by half by 2015, which is a huge challenge. Another goal calls for training in life skills for all young people and adults. UIE has the expertise and experience to help in both areas. The future also holds important challenges for UIE as an organisation. After being UIE’s main financial backer for 50 years Germany is phasing out its institutional support grant and asking other partners to take a greater share. This is the immediate challenge for the Governing Board and the staff as they plan the next phase of UIE’s work. They can be encouraged by the fact that education has never been higher on the world development agenda. UIE has shown before that it can adapt to new circumstances and I am confident that it will do so again. UIE is well placed to respond to calls to help countries increase both the quantity and the quality of education. It is not enough to bring education to more people. It must be education of quality. What do we mean by education of quality? There have been many attempts to define it over the years in a succession of reports and studies, many of them conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. However, I will leave you with a very simple definition. I noted earlier the dramatic manner in which Europe has united in the fifty years since UIE was established. The most recent manifestation of that growing unity is the Euro currency that was introduced this year. For me, each of the Euro notes provides a metaphor for quality education. One side of each note depicts a window or a door. That can symbolise the individual looking out onto the world, learning about it, and acquiring the intellectual knowledge and practical skills that will make them competent human beings. Some call this the creation of human capital. But human capital by itself is not enough. Individuals are not islands. We live in communities that are part of a wider society and a wider world. The other side of each Euro note depicts a bridge. That can symbolise the role of education in building bridges between people and community. It symbolises the formation of responsible citizens who will strive for a world of peace and co-operation. This is the creation of social capital. Blending the human and the social is of crucial importance in the education of adults that is at the core of UIE’s role. Fifty years of distinguished service have shown that UIE is well equipped to rise to the challenges of education in a new century. I congratulate UIE on its past and I wish it every success for the future.