ConfBeijing98RB

Western Values, the meaning of education and globalization at the end of the 20th century

Communication au Colloque annuel de l'Association Asiatique d'Éducation Comparée (A.A.E.C.), 7-8-9 octobre 1998, Beijing (République Populaire de Chine), Institut d'Éducation Internationale et Comparée (I.E.I.C.), Université Normale de Beijing.

Professor René Barbier, University of Paris 8 (Educational Sciences, Research Center on Social Imagination and Education)(translation : Mme Arlette Weichert) (1)

The conference paper that I propose to present today, crosses a range of disciplines, from cultural anthropology, sociology and political economy, to psychology, moral philosophy and comparative education. Transdisciplinary by choice, in line with the way we are developping the notion of crossdiscipline studies ("Transdisciplinarité" in french) with other international scientists (NICOLESCU, 1996) (2), under the name of "Transversal approach"("approche transversale" in french) (Barbier, 1997) it seeks to clarify, from an educational point of view, the values that are very specifically attributed to western countries faced with the globalization.

On a wider perspective, transdisciplinary studies lead to a conception of the meaning of education which articulates two approaches that are both opposite and complementary: on the one hand; academic knowledge and practical skills , and on the other hand personal, intimate, spiritual and experienced relationships in the world (R. Barbier, l'éducateur comme passeur de sens)(3).

In this it is specificaly philosophical, if we agree with contemporary philosopher André Comte-Sponville, that philosophy: " is a radical inquiry movement, like the starting or restarting of reasoning : that philosophy is a new thinking, a free and liberating thinking ...

Philosophy is the dawn starting all over again of the thinking, wich never stops rising -the pale light of reasoning- from the bottom of our twilight" (COMTE-SPONVILLE, 1996, P.7).

1. The question of values in education

Today, the question of values and of ethics in education is a key question for us, as it is for other scientists in the world (PETERS, 1996; NAUD, MORIN, 1978). If the role of education, as thought the sociologist Emile Dürkheim, is a necessary transmission of socio-cultural heritage from one generation to another, we question ourselves more and more, but not necessary correctly : what makes values in this world and what is worth transmitted to our children.

But, what is a value ?

From this perspective many points need to be discussed:

- When all is said and done, what is the meaning of "value" and "ethics" ? How should one talk about values in this period of globalization ?

- Is it possible to identify "central values" considered essential to be transmitted in the contemporary educational process and could'nt these values be summerised in some very simple ones (to change what is possible to be changed in this world, to remain solidary to accept what is inevitable ). Is it possible to talk about the "Ethical problematic" in this respect (AXELOS, 1985)?

The question of values and ethics

Straightaway we must specify that the concept of a "value" changes according to cultures. It remains to be seen whether there are universal values or not ? Is every culture trying to build its own values as universal ones ? In the West , "civilised" people have been contrasted with the "uncivilised". In the East, "the Middle empire" with the "barbarians".

A philosophical question.

Western philosophers have always tried to understand the notion of Value. So did the Chinese "Men of learning", through their history of thinking (CHENG, 1997). According to the Greeks, value is merged into Being in the notion of Good: be it Physical well-being (accoding to Aristippe de Cyrène, Socrate's disciple) or the harmony of the personnality. Socrates admits "no one is nasty voluntarily". The Chinese philosopher Mencius speaks of the inherent kindness of mankind. The value, arising from action, coincides with being, that is obtained from knowledge as representation. From detachment and from contemplation, the stoic intellectualism leads to a project of morality which aims to remain in accordance with the natural order in order to overcome pain by distinguishing things which depend on us and other things which do not (Epictète). More than ever, Greek philosophy and Chinese thinking meet each other. Later, Spinoza proposed the union of the thinking soul and the whole nature as the supreme knowledge. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as for Bergson later on, the value is an intuitive data of transcendal origin. It is to be noticed that Rousseau, in the rationalist and measured Age of Enlightenment, with his hostility against the poetic spirit, is considered to be relatively marginal and the precursor of Romanticism. He advocates letting oneself be enlighted by "the lights that enlightens the heart", as he writes it in l'Emile, because we possess intuition, infallible judge of good or evil. Bergson will develop the thinking of Rousseau by speaking of aspiration as a product of intuition by which man opens himself to the duration, the creative generosity of God (BERGSON, 1932).

Emmanuel Kant and Fichte judgment consider value as given by an intuition of general will, where the moral obligation starts. The value is first of all in the intention, dependant on the will, which governs the act. For Max Scheler, disciple of Edmund Husserl, value is given by the immediate judgement of preferential evidence. What caracterises a moral value for Scheler, is first of all the way it is related prior to any experience a priori. Even if the value is included in facts, it is relatively independant of the real-life content or of the rational process. The experience of a moral value is pure emotion a priori.

For Arthur Schopenhauer the value is in relation to feelings, particularly that of a pity and pain for Others. Justice and charity, fondamental vertues of Ethics, contradicts the nature and the world occurs the "living-will", the selfish struggle and pain. Frederic Nietzsche rises above all morality in the name of the Ethics of Zarathoustra and Emile Durkheim mingles the value for its social nature and creates a moral sociologism (in "l'Éducation morale") (DAVAL et GUILLEMAIN, 1964).

But the result of this philosophical thinking leads a statement : What man did unconsciously in the past and in the illusion of submitting himself to what is independant of his creative act, he must do it consciously today. This project of re-evaluation of all values leads to a rejection of all previous values because they lost every fundament when unfounded appeared their pretention to an objective validity. For Existentialism, man is an unfathomal of feedom. He is obliged to base his choice without reasonning. This attitude towards the void is call Existenz which can be genuine or not according to its acceptation of the void. Anyway it is based on a fundamental value : the absolute character of the finite knowledge of human Finite. So every culture carries essential values.

In that constellation of philosophical approaches of value, arises more particularily, the question of the teaching of values in a pluralist and liberal society which denies any idea of "state morality" as it is noticed by Jean-Claude Forquin (FORQUIN, 1994). Let us consider our own definition, particularly what we call "ultimate values" and how they refer to education.

Ultimate values

I call "value" that what, in the name of which, we accept to risk something for something we have our heart set on and "ultimate value" what stands as an essential risk (lose one life, life beloved ones, lose vital social objects) (4). We easily understand that "ultimate values" are very limited in number. Any one who accepts to look at himself would agree with this fact. We touch to our ultimate values when we feel that the meaning we give to life is in danger. In a certain way every man carries specific ultimate values but I would call this a "Person": the individual integrated in the flow of the world, who has discovered that some of his ultimate values are or can be common, after discussion, to the whole human community. The personalist philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier has largely enlightened the difference between individualism, anarchism and personalism. According to Mounier, the person immerses in nature. He is indissolubly both body and spirit. For that reason, he offers resistance to materialistic as well as spiritualistic. But man transcends nature by its creative dynamic and complex, it is the first step of universal personalization process (MOUNIER, 1967).

The defense of ultimate values of a person when attacked of a person by his surrounding is what he estim to be his attachment to life that is to say his implication.

Is it, as thought the philosopher and political scientist Cornelius Castoriadis (CASTORIADIS, 1975), that some values are created by the social Imagination of a certain period and resist to decay of degenerescence, as was the invention of the democratic idea in ancient Greece. Could the same process apply to the invention of love in Christianism as a social movement once and for all in the spirit of humanity even if it is provisionally realized ans through a scapegoat (GIRARD, 1974, 1978) ?

Could the revolutionary ideals of Equality Freedom and Brotherhood be better achieved in the history of nations and people ? Are all values fleeting and of short-term ? Do they constitute the hard core of any culture the relativity of which we know, and which makes the difference between culture and nature ? This point of view is basically philosophical and it determines largely the attitude and the behaviour of every man towards life with two major risks:

- The radical pessimism and the idea that "brother will turn upon brother", in the up-to-dated line of Thomas Hobbes.

- The smug optimism that denies any evaluation of breaking off, the distorsions, the gaps with an absolute ideal of purity and that we can find in any dogmatism.

Often, we are not really able to commit oneself in favour of one or an other option. We cannot either accept an alteration of each of those two options in the process of every day life, we lack dialectic and this is the reason why we remain voiceless and without any project when confronted with the questions of contemporary youth.

Shall we not read again the writings of Men of Learning who, in China, knew how to articulate contradictions without denying any of their specificities, and let emerge the meaning of "blandness", a regulated balance of life throuhg which passes any wisdom (JULLIEN, 1991) ?

The inclination towards ultimate values leads to the question of ethics.

The question of ethics.

I call "ethics" an axiological congruence reduced to ultimate values of a subject (person, social group and a large human community) which allows him to make a sense of his relationship to the world: sense would mean here both radical significations, way of life and emergence of incorporated sensitivity, in close contact with a permanent proof of reality.

From that angle, we agree with Claude Paquette, a canadian scientist, that "an ultimate value is very closely linked to an individual and to his behavior. It is within the individual and it colours his daily movements ... but on the other hand, it is worth mentionning that an individual value is not static. It solidifies ot changes according to our real-life experience" (PAQUETTE, 1982, P.22).

For this author, it is necessary to differenciate the values of "preference"from the values of "reference". The first ones are choosen among a whole range of available values given by the social group and which highlight's them. There is a kind of link between individual and collectivity in this choice.

But the second group of values makes reference to the behavior of the individual. They are integrated to the person and he is constituted by them. They are at the same time more demanding and more committing towards others as well as to oneself. For Claude Paquette, eight criterions allow the identification of a value:

- It is a choice for the individual.

- The individual knows the consequences of his choice of values.

- it can be in one's daily behaviour.

- It gives to his existence, meaning and diection.

- The individual is bound to it.

- The individual asserts it in public.

- The individual is publicly involved in activities which promote them.

- For the individual, there is a very strong interaction between his personal life and his professional life (P.31).

Any value seems to be coming from a combination of factors: a genetic heritage, a cultural heritage, an educative cell, harmonious personal experiences and conflicting personal experiences. It is possible to make an axiological analysis aiming to analyse oneself, through our routines, our gestures, our experiences, our coherences and incoherences, our reactions, our peers, our environment, our decisions, our uncertainties, our balances, our lack of balaces, our satisfactions and insatisfactions, our ambiguities...

This reflection is very important in Educational Sciences because, as Olivier Reboul, philosopher of education questions himself: "is it possible to do sciences of education without taking into consideration its inherent values ? ... As sciences, they only decide on what is and not on what it ought to be; and yet, the "be" they are concerned with, namely the educative fact, is at first sight an "ought to be" which includes, implicite or explicite, a scale of values." (REBOUL, 1989, P.96)

For Olivier Reboul, the scientificity regarding values is characterised by three dimensions: objectivity, instrumentality and coherence. But applied to education, this type of scientificity is not obvious, as the author mentions it. There is a considerable risk of falling into a kind of absolute "relativism" where the notion of value is diluted in individalistic indifference under the pretext of being tolerant.

Ethics and morality

Let's distinguish the two concepts which are many times mixed up in common langage. Morality is related to the practical necessity and is entirely linked with cultural, economical, social and political horizons. There is a morality for Arapesh and a morality for Mundugumor, as we can find a morality for "socialist" societies and a morality of "capitalististic" societies. In China, the morality that prevails in Beijing or in Hong Kong profelled by the modernization of economy is not the same as the one of the "Na ethny" those himalayan farmers who live without the notion of "father" and without real wedding as a dominant institution (Cai Hua, une société sans père ni mari. Les Na de Chine, PUF, 1997). On the contrary, ethics is the principle of morality. "the ethical commitment differs from adherence to rules; it places us on a side other than prescriptions, exhortations, moral practices; to the point of being afraid of breaking thoses prescriptions and those practices, of breaking down their effect of binding anxieties which lead them to make One, the One-Whole of the Me-Master, the One-Whole of a City and of a State."( (IMBERT, 1987, P.7). Aristote in the "The Nicomanechean Ethics" (L.II) showed the passage from êthos as a way of being normaly to éthos as a moral habit. The French psychonalyst Jacques Lacan mentions that Aristote considers éthos as a creation of habits that makes particular order, the microcosm, in conformity with universal order, the macrocosm (LACAN, 1986, P.31). Ethics is bound to the freedom of the subject that meets the other in his life. It allows the individual to the process of personalization by the faculty of critically discretion according to what the world makes of him and what he wants to makes of the world.

A model of values in the western society.

We must go back to the sources of western society and pay attention to the great values of the Republic coming from the French Revolution and from the Age of Enlightenment, since they have been very influent during the recent centuries in all the western countries, with a will of hegemony in other countries.

Traditionally, the French Revolution of 1789 has imposed the idea, in Europe and in what will become the United States of America, of a triptych of values founding at the same time the universe of the person and of the society: Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood.

Originally, the free market, was based on a assumed harmonious link of the three principles. Individual freedom would open the game of initiatives and competition coming from natural abilities of every actor, supposed to be basically rational. Everybody was hold to have "equal" rights to participate to the rules of the game. This was supposed, according to a whole range of synergies, to generate a real brotherhood between human beings.

A world and historical logic seemed to be on course, systematized by Hegel, leading to a civilization that would carry humanity and progress. Every human being considered in his transcendance was an owner of a fragment of the divine humanity and the concept of equality suggested reciprocity. Everyone could recognize himself in the other and brotherhood became the secular version of the evangelic principles.

Indeed, Hegel had introduced violence as means of expression of the individualism. The individual affirmation goes through a mortal fight with others from which there would emerge a dialectic of the master and the slave. Associated to the "will-to-live" de Schopenhauer, this logic leads to "will-to-power" of Nietzsche and to the reign of "Superman", easily turned off to inhuman barbarity by his sister and the nazi ideologists. Later, the idealized benefits of individual freedom, two masters of suspcion, Marx and Freud, have seriously questionned the problem.

Any way, traditionally the ideals of the French Revolutionary gave rise to an extraordinary creative impulse in the West. As the results, the free market economy creates.an unprecedented progress in the economic cultural and social order but it also destroys the rural countryside way of living. The German philosophy of the XXth century, with Heidegger, will convey a kind of nostalgia the figures in distress of the sacralisation of nature, of the glorification of the craft industry, the rural mode of living, that the national-socialism has used to its own benefits.

The West knew for a long time how to conciliate man and development in spite of dangers of drifting into egoism. In Europe of Christendom, the Reform avoids the drift by reconsidering the virtues of gotten goods used for acceptable means, a token of heaven 's favours. Max Weber showed that protestantism, by its ethics, knew how to link it with the capitalism spirit. Philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment will make some corrections by introducing individual egoism as a honorable incentive of human activity and capacities of creation, that are socially acceptable. Nevertheless, Morality seems to be more and more reduced to personal reflection whereas collective productive activity is sinking into immanence without transcendental reference. As years passed this trend went on leading to almost a whole autonomy at the end of the XXth century governed by the imperative of globalization.

3. Western values in globalization.

Approach of "globalization"

That's how Globalization calls a process of economic complexification which, from one sector to another, imposes itself all over the world. The word fascinates and causes anxiety. It presents all the characters of the "sacred" with its "mysterium fascinans" and its "mysterium tremundum", attraction and fear before the unknown, described by phenomenologists of religions (OTTO, 1969).

Ancient and continuous phenomenon, having peaks and back-lashes globalization is marked by the development of the computerised communication. The globalization of networks is a fact and works logically with universal standards.

The place of the Nation-state is put into question by globalization. The emergence of transnational planetary phenomenon (ecology, human right defense, communication by internet, etc.) and the world or the continental monetary regulations (UNO/G7/european union, etc.) lead to iidentification. We are going toward what Fernand Braudel has named "economy-world" (BRAUDEL, 1979), existing since the XVIth and XVIIth century, it is today characterised in an imperialistic way by the extension of the market mecanisms to all the countries of the planet. What appears to be important nowadays is the fact that nation-states seem to be torn between the modernization linked with the globalization and the reinvention of the tradition. We are then assisting to new contours of political community for which space is not limited by territorial borders but are reconstructed according to entreprise strategies, the good flows, population-shifting and effects of communication.

The countries of Pacific-Asia are particularly concerned by this type of reorganization and are creating economic spaces of growth relatively autonomous concerning political realities. Taking into consideration the transnational networks constitute one of the major aspect of the comprehension of international interdependence processes. Chine as well as India have close and complex relations with their diasporas and this explains mainly investments in some regions and their economic takeoff.

The economic interdependance institutes a common culture connected with the communication industries which extend their commodities in the direction of the elitist and globalized customers, city dwellers and opened to tourism. A new scale of cultural reference is being established worldwide in urban societies. More over, we are witnessing the emergence of a new social class, an "hyper world upper middle classes" ("hyperbourgeoisie") that lords it over the economic, social and cultural order of the planet (DUCLOS, 1998, P.16-17).

The influence of the "MacWorld culture" (Mac Donald, Coca Cola, Microsoft, IBM, Disneyland), over the reference values, is imposing itself all over the world.

Nevertheless, according to Riccardo Petrella (PETRELLA, 1997), Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), globalization might be an "infernal machine"

Based on the primacy of benefits and of the perfect freedom of action of private enterprise, and based on the sovereignty of the so called selfregulating market, globalization forsakes individuals, social groups, towns and regions and even countries.

Far from optimizing material and immaterial ressouces of the planet, - and not even to mention here the sunject of human resources, globalization creates wastage and malfunction. Resources, individuals, social groups, towns and regions and even entire countries are abandoned or excluded: They are judged not to be profitable enough - by or for - the world machine. This explains therefore the absurd comparative competition with which they are confronted in order to be "competitive", that is simply to survive (VIRILLIO, 1998, P.20). These analyses are well accordance with those of other economists or sociologists. Particularly, Samir Naïr gives us, with Edgard Morin, a vast panorama, tragic enough, of the quasi inevitable process of globalization at the end of the XXth century (MORIN, NAÏR, 1997) and Ignacio Ramonet speaks of "Geopolitics of chaos" (RAMONET, 1997).

Western family and globalization

The Western family, particularly the structure of the French family, is necessarily disrupted by the globalization phenomenon. Evelyne Sullerot describes the evolution of the family from the baby-boom after the second war until the baby-krach and the "unravelling" ("démaillage" in french) of the family during these last years. Is the surviving family the last bastion against the dismantling of the sociability structures ? Are we rather witnessing to the "rising of dismay" (SULLEROT)?

In France, rural country life has been diminishing for a long time. The French family who used to be basically rural now becoming urban. We were aware of sharty-towns and slums in the fifties. The Abbé Pierre became famous in winter 1954, because of the charitable help he gave to people sleeping in the street. Nevertheless, today in 1998, because of the economic crises, we still can find an increasing number of homeless ( with no fixed abock) from all age-groups in the streets of big towns. From 1989 to 1996, the number of persons running minimal service income (RMI in french) has doubled. Although emergency assistance is given to homeless persons, they rather choose to be confronted with the freezing cold rather than going to an appropriate center where they are socially stigmatised.

The long term unemployed, single parent families, isolated women, young people of the under 25 are particularly touched by that povertyin France. Average buying power went down 7 points from 1960 compared to 1996. The job seekers are 12 times in percentage in 1996 than 1960 (and 26 times for the under 25).

On the other hand, the disparity between incomes of the rich and the poor has considerably increased.

Working conditions are changing : part time employment, interim, variable working hours, change of business site are becoming the norm. For more than ten years, new technologies, the new rules of management and flexibility intended to reduce the crisis, have observable consequences on the type of jobs and on the work organization in France. In 1982 there were 300 000 fixed term contracts and this number has doubled. But then, this procedure concerns the unqualified as well as the intermediate professions and executives. Many employees have no job security.

The "work civilization" is no more what it used to be. After people used to wish for it to happen, the reduction in the working hours hides a disappointment: nothing more is expected from the job, except the basic essentials. We are more and more witnessing a crisis of working motivation especially among unskilled young people.

In France, marriages are taking place later and are fewer than twenty years ago. Since 1960, the number of divorces was increasing and stabilized in the middle of 80 but very few people remarry. The traditional conjugal family, still revailing, coexists with other models : unmarried couples, with or without children, single parent families or "reconstructed". Young people stay longer with their parents. When they leave their parents, they cohabit during a certain period before getting married when a baby is expected. In the working-class areas, grand-fathers play an important educational role because of the professional activity of the mother (Sciences humaines, 1994, P.47).

Contrary to what could be expected, fathers reconstruct they remarry a new partner with children and in that second marriage they are more likely than their ex-wives to have more children (6660.000 reconstructed families in 1990).

It is not easy to identify with enough correlations, the impact of the phenomena of globalization on the family structure in the West. Of course, School policies, parental activities, the lacking of job security play a major role. But the impact of the changing of values dictated by globalization are transmitted by modern means of information. Information arrives at home by televisual means, tadvertisings, and more often by computerized means (internet). This advent of predatory materialism by the globalisation and criminal economies opens the door to a generalised individual and unscupulous egoism. Nevertheless, we have to avoid hasty judgment. Quite often, changes in families have their origin in historical factors of greater continvance in time. Globalization can also present creative aspects, difficult to imagine in this chaotic period, as the scientist of CNRS, Zaki Laïdi, claims in "uneasiness in the civilisation" ("Malaise dans la mondialisation"(1998).

The important question of "violence" that haunts the western and eastern countries, and which encumbers the televisual production all over the world, has also impact on the family life. Children are very sensitive to violence on television, even if investigations on this topic are controversial (FRYDMAN, 1994, P.10-13). Because of the break down and the malfunction of the family (school failures, social and psychological inadaptation etc.), scientists and university searchers studied and developped a new branch of human sciences that is expanding: Family Education (DURNING, 1995). But the economic aspect in the malfunctionings is not sufficiently taken into account...

Central educational values in today's world

The ultimate values of human beings are limited and have to be questioned in the perspective of globalization. I will only analyse three values that I consider as central in education and urgent in our time : to change what can be changed. To remain solidary. To accept what is inevitable.

Those values are rather general orientations of the personal and collective life than strictly limited values. Actually, they are adjusted in variable ways according to cultures and individuals. Therefore "changing what can be changed" means ingeniosity and courage, in order to fight against the swelling of the Yang Tseu (in China, August 1998). "Standing solidary" means compassion and collective assistance to all the people who suffer (Famine in the south of Sudan in 1998).

Changing what can be changed

Compared to the East, if the modern and tragic Westhas has a special value, that it is that maxim. The light of the Orient in this respect is too often shaded by popular fatalism. But often it is a short-sighted view of the oriental philosophy. The wiseman from India Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) has never preconized any fatalist attitude towards the world. As most of the non-dualistic wisemen in the Orient, he supports the idea that change must begin by one'sself, if we want it to be realized outside, in the social, political and economic life. Western psychanalysis says the same thing taking other postulates. The present request for "personal development" in the on-going education in the West, beyond a certain ideology of the post-modern individualism reflects this aspiration for a change if we consider contemporary authors (Le Journal des psychologues, February 1990, PP.19-51). We find the same attitude in the old Chinese thinking that to follow the world "flow", the "course" of things is not conceived as a fatality in regard to the "truth" that would endlessly escape and that we would be running after. In Chinese thinking, contrary to western philosophy, the concept of "truth" has no consistancy, compared to the flow of totality as it has been shown with much relevance by the French sinologist François Jullien (Jullien, Un sage est sans idée, ou l'autre de la philosophie, 1998).

What can be changed comes from different ways of analyses: psychological, inter-relational, group, organizational, institutional according to five perspectives of an expert in education, Jacques Ardoino (ARDOINO, 1977). I would add to the awaking of man to the consciousness of his natural and cosmic environment. This ecological consciousness is fundamentally a sacred relationship because it implies the realisation of both the dimension of "mysterium tremundum" and "mysterium fascinans" before nature and cosmos, but at the same time the determination to understand and resist of Chaos in order to organize a livable and connected world.

More than any other field of education, ecological education is absolutly essential in any education. On this point of view, I agree with Olivier Reboul : "If we agree on this, our axiom, that there is no education without values, can be then completed this way: there is no education without a certain sacredness"(REBOUL, 1989, P.112). We know, from Three Mile Island and Tchernobyl, that we are under threat from the irresponsable entreprise of some persons or social groups who pollute our planet, our "world-homeland"(MORIN, KERN, 1993). Bioethics shows us how the dangers of neurosciences and the genetic manipulation can lead to catastrophy. Personal transformation deepens onself and makes oneself more thoughtful. But above all it allows us to enter into interlinking.

Interlinking ("Reliance" in French)

This is a key concept for our subject. From group dynamics known for its sessions that have gathered many ten thousands of persons, through groups of meetings and of massages which in the U.S.A. and in Europe have gathered many millions of individuals up till telematic networks, to popular, religious or sportive gatherings, it seems that there is a desire to meet other people, desire that is particularly difficult to satisfy in modern life.

The concept of interlinking is widely elaborated by the Belgian sociologist Marcel Bolle de Bal at the end of the 70, working from a sociology of the media. To the notion of connection, interlinking adds direction, finality, insertion in a system. It is by deprivations in the daily existentiality that the concept of interlinking can be specified. To day human beings suffer from having no link between them, onless it is via machines. "Pachinko" players in Japan who deal with their isolation by their concentration on the slot machine in front of them is a case in point (Thierry RIBAULT, in Japan, Pachinko Folly), Le monde diplomatique, août 1998, P.4).

Missing from the vocabulary of human sciences, interlinking will be recognised and imposed as a concept by Marcel Bolle de Bal (BOLLE de Bal, 1981, 1996) in Belgium. Interlinking has a double conceptual meaning:

- The act of linking or linking oneself: interlinking done, carried out, , that is the act of interlinking;

- The result of that act: the experienced interlinking, that is the state of interlinking. By to link as the author means "create or recreate links, establish or reestablish a relationship between a person and either a system to which he belongs or one of its subsystems". From there, we can dstinguish many dimensions of the interlinking: the interlinking between a person and natural elements : heaven (religion), the world (roots), the universe. M. Bolle de Bal suggests in that case to use cosmic interlinking. The interlinking of a person and the many instances of his personality (Cid, ego, superego; body/spirit, thinking/feeling), that is to say psychological interlinking; the interlinking between a person and another social actor, individual or collective (group, organisation, institution, social movement) is the social interlinking properly speaking of which psychological interlinking (between two persons) constitutes both a particular case and a basic element.

Social interlinking is thorefore the type that puts together two social actors of which at least one is a person and Bolle de Bal specifies that social interlinking means here "the act - or the result of that act - of creating or recreating the links, of establishing or reestablishing a relationship between two different social actors where at least one is a person: to bring together or to bring again into contact or communication actors that are distinct disconnected or isolated from each other" (BOLLE de BAL, 1981, P.15-16). This social interlinking always supposing the bringing into play of a mediating system (system of signs or collective representations; social instances).

To remain solidary

It is interesting to notice that the value of solidarity is still present in French opinion whatever the attraction for more individualistic interests. It is impossible to consider an educative ethic without giving importance to this value. Are we not conscious today that we are part of a planetary system ? The comprehension of technical, scientific and economic phenomena needs this openmindedness. Their cultural and social consequences go beyond the framework of derived factors. The prediction of an increase in the near future of people from the South towards the North, as from the the East to the West, has the merits of reconsidering a solidarity which was anyway fragile. The Germans after unification know how a great deal about that. Some people are already complaining and suggest to "close the borders". But it is not possible to close the door to poverty, we should act to reduce it at its origib policy. This implies a different world economy,, criticism of globalization and other concrete attitudes of some "development workers" whose behavior is far from being compatible with local development in the third world countries, as it has been so well shown by Robert Chambers in his book (CHAMBERS, 1990).

To accept the inevitable fact

This third central value in education is not easy to recognize. No doubt because it is not clearly accessible and definable (5). Psychoanalysis names it "reality principle" that drives in permanence human action. But what is "reality" ? Are not which opposes the "pleasure principle", the supporters of the "reality principle" (for every body else) the same as those who have power and privileges ? In France, factory inspectors who impose penalties on business managers who do not respect industrial hygiene and safety know that when the economic and political stakes are important, their job becomes useless. This is more obvious in the third world countries. The poor workers of the polluting factory of Carbide Union in Bophal, in India that were killed in hundreds some years ago, were obliged to accept "reality" of economic oppression and the social and human irresponsibility of the leaders of the multinational companies whose decisions were taken in the USA in the name of more and more profits. Should we say "yes" to no matter what? In order to say yes, we must first of all be able to say no!

"For death to be fair

life must be fair"

as it has been written by the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, from his prison.

Only death has an unavoidable nature. But let's not miss the field of our reflection here. First of all we are talking about personal death, but also of the physical pain or morality against which we cannot do anything. Children who know so well how to burst into laughter, know also the stoic art of dying as it has been humanly shown by the psychoanalyst Ginette Raimbault (RAIMBAULT, 1985). We cannot control death, perhaps is it the reason why we have not yet co-destroyed eachother ? Can one imagine the greed that would arouse a person who would possess that mastery ? So many scientists are desperately researching in order to find it, after the in vitro fertilization and the cloning. Substantial results have been achieved in the perpective of slowing down the aging process, of the replacement of malfunctioning organs and it is very useful. But fortunately, death escapes them and underlines their ignorance and their inability to master the world on the background of reality. This ignorance and lack of control on the dynamic process of the world, that are so well highlighted by Chinese wisdom for many thousands of years.

Thus, as said Confucius, "it's fine", the world continues to run according to an immovable order. But noboby can accept death (and the correlative pain) if he cannot put it in the symbolic field of meaning. From this angle, individual death, disconnected, does not exist. Nor does birth for that matter. A generation that cannot transmit anymore to its generation central values that weave an authentic symbolic field is condamned to die out without a real descendance. Sometimes, we have the impression that this risk is lying in wait for us in the West. Rimbaud and Hölderlin are, may be, the last famous Western poets, as thinks the philosopher Kostas Axelos, in a grandiose and tragic view of the spreading out of the poeticity in the "game of the world" (AXELOS, 1984, 1985). I do not think so. Human expressivity passes by poetry and as it is so well expressed by the Chinese wisemen, the virtue of humanity, the Ren, is part of the radical poeticity. By now, it has a thousand ways to spread out, but because of the way it is encoded in the day spectacular zeitgeist it follows that it becomes sometimes bloated and then insignificant.

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NOTES

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1)Site WEB internet CRISE:

http://www.fp.univ-paris8.fr/recherches/accueilCRISE2.html

(many texts)

2 )Centre de Recherche et d'Etudes Transdisciplinaires (CIRET), site internet:

http://perso.club-internet.fr/nicol/ciret/ (many texts )

3) text on the WEB:http://perso.club-internet.fr/nicol/ciret/bulletin/b12/b12c9.html

4) Reboul O., la philosophie de l'éducation, Paris, PUF, que sais-je, 1989.

The author writes (p.105) "a value is what is worth while, that is something which merits a sacrifice. Sacrifice takes place when the thing has a value"

5) As Viviane and Gilbert de Landsheere, concede it the evaluation of the emotional field (in which authors include axiology) is not easy. In that field, there is a real insufficiency of means of measuring: définir les objets de l'éducation, Paris, PUF, 1989 (1975), ch.2, pages 134 and the next.