Seminar Chair Dr. Stephen Smith outlined the aims of the seminar to :
Ask what ’education’ is in the context of creating social change.
Examine how different sectors might participate in informing the environment in which intolerance grows and exists.
Examine how the combination of NGO sector and government departments may cooperate in developing and implementing policy.
To ask how local issues are understood and addressed in an appropriate manner in a world in which international treaties, statements and conferences are becoming more prevelant.

Message from Alexey Kisilev
Deputy Minister of Education, Russian Federation
The Deputy Minister stressed the importance of Education leading to the coexistence of cultures. He outlined the challenge by stating that the purpose of the Russian Education system is in part to preserve the different cultures of the 170 national minorities living in the Russian federation.
He suggested that the work is on two distinct levels, with the curriculum and with the renewal of local community based education. The current structure of the curriculum is to 80 % federal, and 20 % regional. When new plans are implemented the regional aspects of the curriculum will increase to 40 % allowing for more teaching on local issues relevant to local communities and minorities.
Mr Kisilev pointed out that a museum about the Holocaust is presently under construction. Three textbooks about Holocaust, a forbidden subject ten years ago, have now been published. In addition teachers in Moscow and St. Petersburg are now trained how to teach about the Holocaust in Russian schools. He emphasised that the main objective of this was the need for the youth of Russia to learn positive lessons from its history.

Understanding Formal and Informal Education
Antje Rothemund, Council of Europe
Antje Rothmund explained the context in which the Council of Europe works its educational strategies in respect of teaching for tolerance. She outlined the fact that the European Convention on Human Rights is the paradigm of values in the work of the Council of Europe in the field of education. She explained that often education is a tool for firefighting the effect of intolerance rather than providing support for its prevention.
As education is a permanent, long-lasting, difficult and repetitive process, she stressed the need for governments to take on the responsibility to create conditions for both formal and informal education and to work with a long term perspective in mind. She also stressed that strategies had to be able to embrace the local/regional/national/inter-national environments with their differing demands and agendas. She underscored that fact that this was a difficult process that should not be underestimated. She also underscored the need to have an enhanced dialogue between the different decision makers dealing with matters of education and youth to ensure that strategies were workable, well supported and communicated. She had particular suggestions for each evironment:

 

In non-formal education

1. Young people have to be seen as a resource, not as a problem. Use policy to provide the conditions for change and then encourage the young people to become their own educators. Peer education programmes with an emphasis on acting/exchanging their own ideas/conclusions.

2. Minority young people – the victims of intolerance must become actors of change themselves. By giving them access, structures, competence and by motivating them to participate in civil society they will be responsibe for creating the possiblity of change.

3. Informal education should be life-long learning for all ages including practicing respect for diversity.

4. Creating intercultural awareness and learning about the local environment needs to happen simultaneously.

In the formal education

1. School curricula must include education for democratic citizenship, intercultural learning, human rights and teaching about the Holocaust. It should enhance solidarity rather than competition.

2. The contents of teaching must eliminate racism, ethnocentric, nationalistic and discriminatory notions. Each school should make specific efforts to reflect upon crimes against humanity.

3. Research has shown that the more democratic a school environment is, the more positive the pupils´ attitude towards tolerance, respect for diversity and acceptance of their responsibility in the society.

4. Training of teachers in the formal environment is essential.

Having presented the considertions that might be given to the formal and informal educational environments, Antje Rothemund concluded by underscoring the need for cross-sector, interdepartmental dialogue between decision makers and greater coherence between political speech and political action if real change is to become an outcome.

Enforcing Legislation, Providing Education
Gurbux Singh, Chairman of the Commision for Racial Equality, UK
Gurbux Singh explained that the the work of the Commission for Racial Equality combines both the enforcement of the law, assistance to individuals for example by supporting their cases in court and with the process of changing the public attitudes – education in it´s broadest sense.

He began with a note of optimism in reflecting the experince in the UK. He suggested that political leadershiphad gradually led to acceptance in Britain of a multiethnic, multicultural society, in which diversity had become more of a strength than a threat. He stressed the importance within this of a legal framework against discrimination as a prerequisite to creating a society in which discrimination is not a permanent and destructive feature. As such a fair society can only best demonstrate itself as such through its institutional arrangements and using powers that exist to ensure it.
His presentation went on to address the broad issue of education as a means of informing society, underscoring the necessity of public education to be carried out on both an institutional and an individual level.

On the institutional level the purpose is to change behaviour. This he suggested is best done by working out codes of practice. So for example a code of practice may be applied and supported in a given way to an individual employer. Through such codes, change is assisted, encouraged and is also visible in its implementation and effects.
On an individual level the purpose of education is to change public attitudes. He suggested that for this to be effective that no single party or entity was responsible, but that it should touch all walks of life. In this he particualrly emphasised the fact that the media and politicians should play a full and responsible role. He stresed that the work to change the media is essential because media is part the armoury to achieve change and to date has been particularly difficult to work with.

In drawing conclusions, Gurbux Singh suggested that minority communities must become and be comfortable with being a part of mainstream life. As concerns over the way in which the media portrayed asylum seekers grows, the concern about violence toward the vulnerable returns. He suggested that this is a warning about the need to be aware of the role of dissemination and to take firm action to inform to foster positive and permanent outcomes.

Not Born with Prejudice – We Learn It
Dr. Irena Versaite,Vilnius, Lithuania
Irena Veisaite observed that it is now a new period in teaching about the Holocaust.
The teaching of Holocaust must be reviewed.

Dr. Veisaite noted that: Holocaust is already history. More than 50 years are separating us from the horrible events. In 10 years time there will be no more witnesses, I mean holocaust survivors. We are already teaching holocaust to a young generation which is far away from the historical events of the Nazi area and has a complete different life experience. There is already a lot of controversy about the holocaust, just only to mention the Holocaust deniers or the recent statement about “holocaust industry”, expressed by Novak and Finkelstein. The growing violence of right-wing young extremists, even if they are still marginal, has to be taken into consideration.
Dr. Veisaite stated that it is obvious that if we want to draw our lessons from the past for the present and future, we have to rethink the Holocaust education system and methodology.

She raised several questions which demonstrated that the system of Holocaust education is not yet sufficiently developed. These included:

1. Holocaust should reflect and be taught in a very concrete context – historical, political, cultural, social, psychological, approaching not only people, but also countries in a very individual way.

2. Holocaust education can not be focused only on Jewish holocaust, but should emphasize much more on other forms of genocide, racism experienced in the past and present.
3. Motivation of teachers. Nothing will work, even Forums on the governmental level, if we have no motivated teachers. Teachers’ training should be the highest priority if we want to go from discussions and statements to action and concrete deeds.

Dr. Veisaite suggested that we have to bring the events of the past closer to young people, to build our teaching on their own experience and understanding in spite of the globalization process and maybe even because of it. “All politics are local”, and education especially.

The difference of Western and Eastern experience has to be taken into consideration. The nations in E&C Europe are victims not only of the Nazi terror, but also of the GULAG, where many more people were killed than in the Nazi Holocaust. She reflected that, when teaching Holocaust education, it is necessary to remind and to teach that victims of the Nazi genocide are Roma people, Jehovah witnesses, homosexuals and others, if even not to such an extant. We have to teach about Armenia, Bosnia. Rwanda, Kosovo, etc.
With regard to the motivation of teachers and Holocaust teachers’ training; in E&C Europe we have to be patient when introducing the Holocaust, you can only go step by step (for instance, Lithuania).

As a Nazi Holocaust survivor, Irena Veisaite suggested that “the terrible experience we went through should determine us not only to concentrate on our own suffering but to be open and especially sensitive to the suffering of our fellow man and do every thing to prevent a new Holocaust in the future.”

Teaching in the Face of Intolerance
Ekaterina Genieva, Open Society Institute, Russian Federation
Ekaterina Genieva is Chair of the open Society Institute in the Russian Federation, a nongovernmental organisation part of a network of similar insitutes active across emerging democracies. Ekaterina’s experience brings her into contact with environments that are consistently intolernat and unenlightened. She explained some of the principles that accompany their work and the need to create educational programmes and to develop resources that can be seen and understood in the local environment where they most need to have impact.

She explained that the program of the Open Society Institute is focused on educational and enlightment tasks. As a part of this they have an ongoing Tolerance program. The goals of this specific programme are:

To disseminate the ideas of tolerance.

To teach non violent approaches to resolve conflicts and to develop legal culture to support it.

To support the governmental program: ”Tolerance and Prevention of Extremism in Russian Society”.

The target groups are the pedagogical community, the school children, the parents and the public bodies. As a part of their programme a poster exhibition (of which a copy was on display) has been shown in 29 regions of the Russian Federation. This she stressed is important because to be able to reach people in their own situations is part of the key to breaking down the prejudices and intolerance that exists at a grass roots level.
In so doing the Open Society Institute is engaged in creating their own action plan for tolerance, that needs to be accompanied by a change of commitment and culture in government at both national and local level as well as within the formal eduation system.
The recent (and current) crisis in Chechnaya presents a real challenge to the concept of stereotypes and how they are conveyed to the population and what is believed about them. These she pointed out are very real circumstances that have an effect on real peoples’ lives. She also raised in what way we listen an incorporate the victims into our teaching about intolerance. She suggested that the victims should always be the first and last consideration in our thinking and in our teaching.