EDUCATION
From the UNESCO/IUBS/EUBIOS Bioethics Dictionary
EDUCATION: (Latin: educatio "rearing" or "bringing up") Systematic instruction, usually of the young, which provides people with the knowledge, skills and wisdom necessary for them to become active members of society. In its widest sense education includes the life-long process of development and maturation, but is more officially restricted to those influences brought to bear on children, adolescents and young adults preparing for the workforce.
In ancient times the Greeks were one of the first civilizations to provide schooling and organized instruction (education). Jewish education also developed early, following along the lines of Old Testament injunctions regarding the training of children, and the Arab world too was very scholarly.
The 12th century saw the rapid development of learning in Europe during the Renaissance, heavily indebted to both Arabic and Hebrew scholarship. With the rise of Christianity, schools were instructing this religious doctrine as well as subjects such as the liberal arts, grammar, logic, arithmetic and music.
The most famous university was in Paris, the chief center of philosophy and theology, while the prototype universities were England’s Oxford and Cambridge. In Catholic countries the church maintained control of education until more recently. By the 19th century new approaches were coming to the fore, heralding, in the 20th century, a wide variety of secular institutions such as Montessori schools and Progressive Education Movements which allow practical, self-paced development.
It is now generally recognized that the state has a duty to provide education for all its citizens, for example the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index uses adult literacy and education enrolment as two of its four measures. Most of the developed world has good literacy and compulsory schooling for children. However, current trends are for increased up-front fees for attendance at the tertiary (university) level. Australia, for example, which in the 1980s had free government-funded university education, at least still has a non-discriminatory scheme in which payment of fees can be deferred until later entry into the workforce. Pressures from international finance institutions to instigate fees for secondary schooling in poor countries like Vietnam, seem reprehensible.
Another trend is industry funding for university research. Such collaboration helps with the costs and applications of research, but the introduction of corporate confidentiality and intellectual property agreements may hinder autonomy and impartiality. Today most tertiary courses are very specialized, with limited breadth of choice within a career stream. This may not be preparing us for the integrated and adaptive thinking required to identify and address global environmental and bioethical problems at a trans-disciplinary level.
Some small, resource-poor nations such as Singapore have realized that one of their few competitive advantages in the global marketplace is intellect. They have slightly readjusted their education systems to focus on context and meta-knowledge; that is, in an information age where any required facts are at your fingertips, teaching the facts cannot be as important as how to easily find and creatively apply them. There has also been a commendable recent trend in the developed world to include current bioscience and bioethics issues in the education syllabus. Such inclusion is vital to prevent prejudice from overriding justice in tomorrow’s increasingly complex and potentially dangerous environmental and ethical decision-making.
(See medical education, religious education, environmental education, propaganda, intelligence, expertise, meta-knowledge, adaptive thinking, enlightenment thinking, memory enhancement, emotional intelligence (IP & MP).
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
This section of the website is devoted to materials that are useful to educators and students in the field of Bioscience-Bioethics. Currently we have available;
Irina Pollards text "Life, Love and Children - a practical introduction to Bioscience Ethics and Bioethics,"
and
The EUBIOS Bioethics Dictionary.
and
A new school text "A Cross Cultural Introduction to Bioethics" accessible on this site, or the original at http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=bioethics_textbook
and
A newly redesigned unit run by Irina Pollard for third year students at Macquarie University. Biol346 Bioscience Ethics and Reproduction unit outline and description page.
JUST PUBLISHED: Guide 3: "Educating Bioethics Committees"
The world of Bioethics Committees is ever changing, often with stunning speed and in unexpected directions. New scientific discoveries, new biotechnologies, new government policies and regulations, new judicial rulings, new international agreements, new professional attitudes, new societal norms and customs, and equally importantly, new bioethical dilemmas and arguments - changes come in a flood and on many fronts. There is a growing consensus that if committee members are to respond effectively to these changes, they must undertake long-term and increasingly intensive education.
Successful Bioethics Committees usually begin the process of education slowly, introducing the process of self-education when they first begin to convene as a group. Bioethics is complex and multifaceted, drawing on philosophy and law as well as science and medicine. Most committee members will lack special training and experience in bioethics, and though they typically have significant expertise in other fields, will be willing to devote some time to this multi-disciplinary field.
This guidebook is intended to assist the members of all four forms of Bioethics Committees to pursue their knowledge of the complex multi-disciplinary field of bioethics. It will provide examples and refer to useful educational resources and directs readers to various materials in pursuit of more intensive education in bioethics.
This book is available in English, Chinese and Arabic. Versions in French, Russian and Spanish will come at a later stage.
English: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001509/150970e.pdf
Chinese: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001509/150970c.pdf
Arabic: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001509/150970a.pdfLocal copy of the English version as saved on this site.
Guide 3: "Educating Bioethics Committees"
email:rduell@rna.bio.mq.edu.au
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