Towars emotional education

Finland is and has been successful in the international PISA-research. This means that the quality of Finnish education is high. Mr. Jarno Paalasmaa, chairman of the Finnish Steiner-society, writes in his article in the Finnish national newspaper Helsingin Sanomat on June 19th 2009 about the challenge of measuring the quality of Finnish education merely based on PISA-research methods. This research does not tell anything about people’s ability to grow and gain emotional wisdom.

The headline of Mr. Paalasmaa’s article summarizes the message clearly: “Children should learn sophistication of the heart in schools”. He does not minimize the importance of quantitative knowledge, but finds it equally important to be sophisticated emotionally. Mr. Paalasmaa’s article focuses on children and young people attending school, but the message applies to people in all age groups just as much. His question is: what is sophistication?

Philosopher Eero Ojanen states in his book Philosophy of Sophistication (2008) that sophistication is more than anything else the inner attitude one has about life and the world, not thus so much a certain level of education. Sophistication is growth towards humanity.

I could not agree more. It is an indisputable asset in life to own a high level of knowledge about a wide range of things, but any given knowledge nor degree in any given subject is only of little value, if one does not understand how to use this knowledge properly. Again one can ask, what is then a proper use of knowledge? A good starting point is to choose to expose the knowledge one possesses to serve good. The pursue for goodness and emotional wisdom is what I personally value very high.

Mrs. Helena Kekkonen, founder of the Peace Education Institute in Finland and the first person to receive the UNESCO Peace Education prize (1981) is originally a chemist. Her career started by teaching chemistry at university level. What separated her from most of her colleagues was the fact that she included teaching knowledge of morality and ethics to all her courses. For her it was important to not only teach the students the theory of chemical disciplines, but also equip the students with a common sense understanding about what to do with the knowledge.

MKFC is emphasizing these exact values in all our courses. Humanity can be learned with proper guidance in cases where one is not born with an understanding about it. With our methods and ideology we can bring both quantitative and emotional education to countless people.

Real hope in Palestine?

First it seemed like there is finally real hope for the Palestinians, in their attempts to gain an independent state. The Finnish national newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported in a rather small article about this headlining "Netanjahu agreed to a Palestinian state with strickt conditions" (Helsingin Sanomat 15.6.2009). First this seemed like fantastic news indeed.

Reading the article further revealed fast that these strickt conditions are actually practically impossible, or extremely unfavorable for the Palestinians to say the least. First, the Palestinians do get an independent state, but this state is not allowed to have an army. Could this really be a realistic option for Palestine? Residing next to one of the strongest military forces in the world with out having own armed forces puts one in a rather volnurable position. To invest this trust in the Israelians would be a sign of great forgiveness.

Another condition is more a political one, forcing the Palestinians to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state. Some Palestinian politicians claim that acknowledging Israel as a Jewish state would compromise the position of the Arabic minority living in Israel.

And further, condition is that Jerusalem will remain fully Israelian. It might seem as a decent condition, but it involves a significant problem, namely that it hinders those Palestinians to return to their homes, who had to flee when the Israelian state was established. Netanjahu also continues to support the expansion of Israelian colonies.

My question is, was this long expected concession actually a realistic move at all? I remain curious.