Human dignity, social exclusion and education in Europe
GEORGIOS TSIAKALOS
Human dignity
Four weeks ago, a group of individuals from “Nikos Poulantzas” Society and Synaspismos (Coalition of the Left and Progress) and I met for an in depth and friendly discussion with one of the prominent philosophers of our time. At one point our discussion led us to the European Council project on human dignity and social exclusion and to the present conference. Commenting on the title of the Conference and the programme, the philosopher said: “I wouldn’t use the term ‘human dignity’ because it is too general and it actually means nothing in particular to people.”
The view of this really significant thinker obsessed me and occupied my mind in the following few weeks. “Human dignity” does it really mean anything to people?
My exploration has not led me directly to the realm of philosophy and science but, on the contrary, through tormenting paths it has led me to my personal experiences, my far remote experiences which provedly have formulated my prescientific view of the meaning of human dignity and made me understand, interpret and assess in a specific way texts of philosophers and politicians on human dignity. Some of them I support, others I reject.
All of these combined made me an ardent supporter of every organised effort for the protection of human dignity. Such an effort is this project of the Council of Europe on human dignity and social exclusion.
Remote as to the time they happened my relevant experiences. Yet they come very close whenever I am called to assess people and situations, organisations and institutions and their attitudes towards people suffering.
During the civil war and the years that followed, I spent my infancy and early childhood years. We lived, like so many other people, in a settlement for uprooted people. In a tent, which we shared with another family, at the beginning and later in a tin hut which we shared with many other families. With my father in jail, the other male members of the family executed and my mother when not in jail (which also happened when I was a baby) wanted by the police, therefore, hiding so as to avoid arrest, but also working to support her two young children.
That is the time I remember most vividly, indeed more vividly than recent facts.
The first picture that comes to mind brings back memories of the agony to secure a tiny private spot in this extremely small, overcrowded with hundreds of people place. A private spot, not for luxury reasons but for mere physical needs. An agon
y that was expressed with intense feelings of shame and which forced this young child to an almost inhumane self-discipline―first exercised on his own body and later extended to all his activities.In the second picture, passers-by offer food and the young child very consciously and defiantly proud refuses it with the excuse “no, I don’t want any, I have just eaten.” The child refuses to accept the offer of apparently well-meaning people who justifiably think that a piece of chocolate could not harm an obviously underfed child.
Even today whenever we talk about those years with my 80 years old mother we consider ourselves lucky to have survived throughout those conditions with our dignity intact. Because, you see, our dignity - the dignity that had to do with both our feelings of shame and our feelings of defiant pride - had for us very distinct characteristics, so distinct that can even today give shape to very clear and vivid pictures in our memory.
And to the question that sometimes automatically comes
to mind: how on earth did we manage to survive with dignity in such conditions, considering that millions of people are daily forced to degrading behaviour? My mother answers by reciting the list of people who supported us, thus switching the focus on how the others supported us in our struggle rather than how we managed.They supported us not out of self-interest - on the contrary, very often they put themselves in danger, not even because they saw some common class or political interests. They supported us just like that, in a self-evident way, because for them the solidarity with people who were forced to live in conditions jeopardising their life and dignity was part of their own self-evident behaviour.
It was their own dignity that compelled them to protect our dignity that was in danger. They would have felt non-dignified, had they not done it. They did as they felt.And that’s what millions of people do even today -despite everything that is being said
about our times. This is how they feel and do, thus showing with their stance and actions what ever since the era of Enlightment has been recorded as an innate element of the culture of our continent, Europe: it is considered a constituent element of our civilization that human dignity is a common good for all humanity, it is a good that belongs ab indiviso to every human being. From the awareness that every person living today is not simply a biological being but he/she includes the whole of humanity both as society and civilization, it follows that insulting an individual actually means insulting the whole of humanity and, therefore, each and everyone of us.From my early years then I learnt from experience, just like millions of people whose dignity is at stake, that human dignity can easily be put in jeopardy in conditions of distress and coercion and that the prerequisite for its protection is that the individual is independent, free from distress and maintains ties of support with other people. Much later I read the marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, who in his work “Natural right and human dignity” stresses that human dignity does not exist unless distress ends, there is no happiness unless people are released from old and new conditions of subjection, and also that the “eunomia” of people walking with their heads up can only exist when shared with other people.
A marxist philosopher, Ernst Bloch left the former East Germany when he realised - and he was quick to realise - that human dignity was violated in t
he name of a supposedly better future society. He was quick to realise, you see, that human dignity cannot be suspended for any reason or cause. Wherever societies tolerate cases of violation of human dignity there is no prospect of a better, a more humane society.What followed has made this obvious in recent years for the European left. It is disturbing, however, that at the same time, on the other side of the political spectrum, there are many signs of an economic and social policy which obliges many people in living conditions that put their dignity in danger.
I want to stress here, in response to the statements recently made by Pope John Paul II in an Internet page on the question “what is human dignity”, that people who protect human dignity have acquired their attitudes through different channels of reasoning. For me, it is the committment to this significant good that matters and not the ideology nor the logical reasoning through which people reach their attitudes.
Based on the above, at a time when we are witnessing the paradox of a rapid increase of wealth but also a parallel increase of people living in distress, I often meet people who, coming from different ideologies, are united against those who believe that human society can see a better economic future even if that means that a number of people who are redundant in the workforce are obliged to remain in the margin for a period of time or for ever.
Social exclusion
The gradual formulation of a league for the protection of human dignity in Europe today is the response to the fact that we increasingly witness an impossible reality: human dignity is threatenen in millions of cases of social exclusion.
What is social exclusion anyway?
Trying to understand the significance of an abstract term, let
us not forget that it refers to real people and that it is the description of the life of real people that gives meaning to concepts. In any case, whichever the group we have in mind - immigrants, refugees, single-parent families, marginalised indigenous minorities, people confined in institutions, people with special needs - it necessarily involves children. And children experience difficult conditions even worse than adults and what’s more, difficult conditions have serious implications for their future.Let us consider school, for example. Parents’ social exclusion usually means children with no equal opportunities at school or even worse, children with no prospect to attend school.
These children who cannot make full use of the public and social good of education are the socially excluded of tomorrow.
From this example, it becomes apparent that “social exclusion” is a different concept from that of poverty. Social exclusion means hindering people from the absorption of social and public goods, such as that of education, health care, participation in politics and so on, the lack of which usually leads to economic distress. The term “social exclusion”, that is, characterises both a situation and a process.
Let me describe in detail what I mean when I say absorption of public and social goods.
People in life, except for personal, are entitled to public and social wealth as well, of which they partake to various degrees. Therefore, children who have only attended compulsory education have used only a particular amount of the public wealth, which can be accurately estimated for each country.
If some of these children continue and finish secondary education as well, they have absorbed a greater amount of the public wealth.
If, finally, some of them attend university and complete tertiary education, then they absorb a much greater amount of the public resources.
The same is true for a number of other activities. Therefore, whoever attends a performance or visits a museum subsidised by the government he/she has absorbed a part of the public and social resources. Similarly whoever has the right to make use of a health system of high standards, he/she exploits the public and social wealth.
It is significant that the less public and social resources a person absorbs the bigger his/her chances to slip into conditions of poverty. One thing is certain: the absorption of public and social wealth is a secure investment for the future. And to a large extent, it is an investment made with public money.
Nevertheless, the degree of absorption of public wealth is not a random act. Several groups of people have more chances of absorbing public wealth than others.
Thus, some groups are excluded by law: for example, only indigenous and not immigrant or refugee groups have access to sectors of the public wealth.
Other groups are excluded indirectly: i.e., minorities that are forced to attend an educational system which does not take into consideration their particularities or is of lower standards. Or refugees, i.e., from East Europe whose professional expertise is actually cancelled either because they need official recognition which they are not granted or because society has already decided that their expertise is not compatible with our economic and social system.
Several groups have been hindered from absorbing public wealth because there exist conditions which function deterrently: i.e., a person with special needs can only partake in the public wealth if the necessary conditions allow his/her access to it.
There are many examples of this kind. If we recorded them all, then the map of social exclusion would unfold in front of our eyes.
The difficulty in handling the causes of social exclusion rests in the fact that usually whoever is excluded from the absorption of public and social wealth he/she is also excluded to a large degree from the most important good of public wealth: equal participation in political action.
It is a vicious circle: The insufficient absorption of basic public and social goods results in unequal participation in political decision making, which in turn deters the decicive fight against negative conditions for social integration, which finally results in insufficient absorption of public and social wealth and so the circle is completed and perpetuated.
From this description, we may realise that whoever does not tolerate social exclusion, he/she has to intervene at one of the points of the vicious circle. Education is a point of decicive importance.
Before I proceed
with a brief description of the situation in education, however, I would like to draw your attention to another important issue. The fact that social exclusion is very often described only in economic terms - in fact twenty years ago it was the most prevalent if not unique approach - and at times it is described in terms referring to rights, an approach that seems to gain momentum in recent years. This approach is bound to have very significant implications for the formulation of policies against social exclusion. Very significant implications because we live in a transitional period and we are called to decide the course our societies will take.In order to understand what kind of transitional societies we live in, let us turn to the classic typology suggested almost fifty years ago (1950) by T.H. Marshall about the development of European societies in relation to the rights and obligations of the people constituting these societies. Marshall distinguishes three types of rights which appear and are established in three subsequent phases:
-The first type and phase: the civic rights in the 18th century with emphasis on the legal consolidation of rights, such as freedom of speech, right to property, equal access to justice and administration of justice.
-The second type and second phase: political rights in the 19th century as a result mainly of the development of the workers’ movement. The focus is mainly on the right to vote, free access and participation in politics and the political system, freedom to establish political parties, etc.
-The third type and third phase which we are still experiencing: the social rights in the 20th century. They include the claim of the right to social security in case of unemployment, sickness and accident, the right to the person’s full development and the right to education.
Four institutional rights correspond to the sectors of social rights: the legal system, the political system, the system of social welfare and the educational system.
In this framework, we may understand how the conflicts evident in the confrontation of social exclusion are based on two questions:
Question number one: Which groups of people do these rights extend to - or, in other words: are there groups of people who live in countries where they are not entitled to these rights?
Question number two: How do we perceive the existence of rights; as their establishment or as the establishment and the creation of the conditions for their realization?
The answer to these questions is not given. On the contrary, the attempt to give answers to these questions constitutes the essence of social struggles and political conflicts in all four institutional systems.
The educational system remains a significant arena of such social struggles and political conflicts.
Why?
3. Education
The concept of education in Europe in the last two hundred and fifty years has been connected with two of the most significant ventures of humanity:
- First, with the venture to free man (every man!) from the self-inflicted immaturity (according to Kant’s definition of enlightment). In other words, with the attempt to make allowances so that man can reach the conditions proper for human kind through education - a situation identifiable with human dignity.
- Second, with the attempt to allow all people to acquire the knowledge to be able to participate in the production of wealth and the consumption of the produced goods. In other words, the acquisition of knowledge which as a rule can protect one from slipping into social exclusion, marginalization and distress. Consequently, the exclusion from education, as a blocking mechanism from successful participation in these two ventures of humanity relates at multiple causal levels with the violation of human dignity. And it is something that happens in Europe daily.
Thus, many children do not attend school, even if in all European countries education constitutes both a right and an obligation.
They do not attend school even by law:
- this is true for children of illegal immigrants and in many cases children of families who have applied for political asylum and their application has not been judged or has meagre chances of success.
- this is also true for several categories of children with special needs.
We realise here that this is the case of exclusion which results from the decision not to extend institutionalised social rights to all groups of people but rather limit them to a part of the population.
There are many more cases of exclusion from education as a result of the decision to take the social right to education for granted only by its institutionalisation and not in relation to the existence of the necessary conditions for its realization. In this way, there are many children who do not attend school despite the existence of law which specifies compulsory education:
This happens in the case of
-children with special needs,
-gypsy children - especially those who live in tents or move a lot
-children of immigrants who have not acquired the official language of the host country
-children living in remote areas
-street children.
These cases persist either because
-we lack the necessary substructure to accommodate children with special characteristics (i.e., children of immigrants, minority children),
-or because prejudices and habits persist in our culture and education (i.e., the case of children with severe special needs),
-or because in Europe, it is considered self-evident that education is
provided in school buildings and at the same time, that access to these buildings is an easy and simple matter for all children―which does not actually happen (i.e., children living in remote areas, children of travelling populations).Moreover, in many cases children are excluded from education due to bureaucratic mechanisms, e.g., when they cannot provide the documents necessary for their school enrollment.
The cases mentioned above are cases of children excluded from school. How many cases are we talking about? Even if it were just one case, it would constitute sufficient basis for raising the issue of violation of human dignity in our continent. But it is not only one.
Is there any doubt that illiteracy among 80% of the Gypsies in Europe is not a random figure? I am aware of the prevailing attitudes which attribute these figures more or less to special cultural characteristics. It is not so. Even if it were so, it should be the obligation of organised societies to solve the problem adjusting their educational system to the special cultural characteristics of these millions of people and not expect the opposite or simply tolerate the situation.
Does anybody consider that the educational exclusion of children with severe special needs occurs because we lack the necessary know-how? It is not so. But even if it were so, then organised societies should solve the problem by creating the necessary know-how to educate these children.
The same applies in all other cases.
However, it is not only the case of absolute exclusion from education. There are many more cases of children who are marginalized in school and drop out because of their marginalization. These are for example,
-Children who cannot use their mother tongue and their education, exhausted with their physical presence at school, has no meaning or prospect.
-Children who are obliged to attend “stigmatized” special schools - schools which any child realises he/she had better not attend at all rather than associate his/her life with the label of the person wh
o has become the object of selection and was assessed negatively.Even more are the children who do not complete school successfully. 10%, according to the federal minister of Education of Germany, is the percentage of students who complete compulsory education without acquiring the official title that would give them access to vocational training. This happens in Germany. A rich country with tradition in education. What happens then in the poorer countries in Europe where great numbers of the population struggle for survival?
What happens also to people who see their kn
owledge wasted and devalued due to changes in international economy and at the same time they see the organized society faced with the choice to either upgrade and update this knowledge or marginalize these people opting for the second choice - just because this option is estimated economically profitable or because on the scene of international economic competition, people’s marginalization does not pose obstacles to the development of economy but on the contrary it may offer a good solution?“Economically, a more profitable solution”. The phrase has just popped up. Not randomly, though it has prevailed in public discourse in the last few years and has acquired the meaning of a criterion with absolute priority vis-a-vis any other criterion, even that of human dignity and, indirectly, of human life.
This is the truth: it has prevailed.
What does it mean, though?
Does it mean that those of us who insist that absolute protection of human dignity must constitute the foundation stone and nucleus of politics belong to the few dreamers of this continent?
Does it mean that the educators among us teach our pupils and students the wrong things when we say that a basic ingredient of our culture is the protection of human dignity which entails fight against and prevention from social exclusion and also education with no discrimination for all?
No, it does not mean these things. It simply means that we are going through a transitional period in the history of this continent. And that we are summoned to map out its course, choosing the values we want our lives and the lives of our children based on and then seeking the appropriate policies that can serve these values. Not vice versa.
Perhaps, however, this is not feasible. Perhaps, after all, the people who claim that the politics of Europe today, the politics which produce exclusion in many sectors is the only possible course of action. Or to put it more bluntly: Has the call for human dignity ever won over the call for economic profit?
I will not answer, as I could, by saying that the economic tigers of Asia, who have suggested a new model of development to the leaders of European economy, a model including much fewer social rights, recently appear to shake thus showing that it is not true that the limitation of social rights can guarantee development and economic stability.
I’ll answer and finish the way I started. With a personal experience. From my mid-life this time. During the junta years, like thousands of other Greeks who could not tolerate the supression of civil ri
ghts in our country, I travelled, an individual without citizenship, with a simple document in my pocket issued by the West German government. Often a suspect in many countries, since I was not even a recognized political refugee - like thousands of people in Europe today. In order to enter a country, I was obliged to get from its consulate a transit visa first, the issue of which relied on the current consulate employee and his/her personal estimate of how much my presence was against the best interest of his/her country or not.Once I was patiently waiting for hours at the waiting room of a consulate. It was just after the ousting of Greece by the Council of Europe. I was patient and quiet until I realised that they were about to reach a negative decision. O
nly then I raised my voice and with genuine indignation I told the employee: “How dare you imply that my presence may be harmful to your country when our ideas and actions were vindicated by the highest institution in Europe, the Council of Europe?”Taken by surprise by the tone of my voice and my argument, the employee gave me the visa. Much later, I realised that which institution is the highest and which the lowest depends on the criteria you pose. In terms of real power, the Council of Europe was anything but the highest power. As an institution, however, responsible for the protection of human dignity it was really the highest in Europe.
The fact remains that by appealing to the supremacy of this institution and everything it entails, I finally won my case.
Why, I wonder, cannot this be generally applied at the level of policies and political action? If the employee of the consulate is representative of people everywhere who are responsible for choosing between what seems to represent their interests, on the one hand, and the protection of human dignity, on the other, then his behaviour suggests to us all that in order for people to decide to opt for human dignity they need to hear, loud and clear, the angry voices of the depressed and our own anger.
Let this Conference be that voice.
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