Migration,pluralism and ‘Earth’s consciousness’: Some reflections starting from Ettore Gelpiʼs thought

A short biography of Ettore Gelpi

The ‘earthling’ Ettore Gelpi was born in 1933 in Milan to an upper-middle-class family. In 1956, he graduated in constitutional law from the University of Milan and founded an association (The Center for Social Initiatives), which carried out educational activities in the suburbs of the city. He began teaching at the experimental middle school of the Humanitarian Society of Milan, at the same time being intensely involved in political activism; first among the ranks of the liberal left, then as a founding member of the Italian Radical Party.

In 1961, he obtained the Harkness Fellowship, a 2-year fellowship to study in the United States, where he earned a Masters of Arts in Adult Education from the Teacher’s College of Columbia University, New York. Upon his return to Italy, he collaborated with various cultural and educational organizations (e.g. Civic Collaboration Movement, FORMEZ, CEMEA). He also led educational and training projects for trade unions and for immigrants, notably his collaboration with the ECAP CGIL of Zurich. In 1971, he went to the Normal School of Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire as an UNESCO expert in charge of the local project for teacher training.

In 1972, he was nominated chief of Lifelong Education at UNESCO in Paris, for whom he carried out numerous missions throughout the world – mainly in Latin America, Africa and Asia – and for whom he organized meetings, seminars and conferences with international experts in formal and informal education.

After leaving UNESCO in 1993, he became chair of the Adult Education program of the Council of Europe in Strasburg in 1994. From 1995 to 1997, he worked as an expert in educational policies for the European Union for a program of collaboration with the Russian Federation. He was a visiting professor in numerous universities (e.g. the University of Paraiba a João Pessoa, the University of Florence, the University of Barcelona and the National Polytechnic School of Mexico). Throughout the course of his professional life, Gelpi held management positions in educational, political and cultural organizations (CEMEA, ECAP-CGIL, Ligue Internationale de l’Enseignement, Association Française d’Education Comparée). In February 2002, he received the award for Lifelong Learning from the city of Kameoka (Japan) in recognition of his contribution to the development of lifelong education in the world. Gelpi died in Paris in March 2002.

Gelpi and cultural pluralism

Even if Ettore Gelpi is known at worldwide level as an expert on adults’ education and lifelong learning, a lot of his work was devoted to the integration of migrants and their children, at the national and international level, as he himself said:

My own experience is this: I have shared activities with Italian internal migrants moving from the south to the north of Italy (Milan 1956–61), with African migrants coming from the neighbouring countries to the Ivory Coast (Bouaké 1971) and with African migrants to France (Paris 1975 to date). There have been many obstacles to their learning other languages or dialects and other ways of life and social habits. It became their responsibility to mediate between their own culture and that expressed by their environment. This mediation was relevant to the future of their children: refusal to integrate or a passive integration might have had consequences for the relationship between their families and society. (Gelpi, 1990, p. 138)

Migrations, intercultural education and cultural mediation

In recent decades, educational structures have been challenged by the participation of students with different linguistic, cultural and educational traditions and, in planning their policies. It is now well known that intercultural education is not an exclusive offer for some pupils considered ‘different’, but a pedagogical proposal for all students (Fiorucci, 2000). Intercultural education is, in fact, a necessary addition to educational structures, which promotes the integration of foreign children, as it provides useful tools to all children growing up today in what can truly be called a ‘multicultural society’ and a ‘culture of interdependence’ (Susi, 1995, p. 19). The educational system must meet this current demand: to allow the citizens to live in accordance with their time, in a reality which cannot take place without a true representation of education and culture. The two are intrinsically linked.

Intercultural education is, therefore, a pedagogical approach that aims to increase awareness of the problems related to intercultural relations and to increase the education of tolerance towards all diversities; all these things are aimed at creating a climate of dialogue and openness that leads to mutual enrichment. It is a way of understanding the role of education so that people of different cultures can get begin to understand each other; taking the opportunity to rethink and revise styles and educational manner, to enrich the educational proposal through the attention to new needs and to compare and examine the differences. But this new pedagogical approach cannot merely assert the values of tolerance, coexistence and respect for differences but it must also promote the right of all people to develop from what they are, on the basis of their needs, through their projects, from a perspective of real social and occupational integration and within a framework of certain rights, in a logic of relations that, in a multicultural society, necessarily involves a comparison with others, with other performances and with other cultures (Susi, 2003). Intercultural education is, above all, linked to the promotion of just social relations in societies where groups of people live, work, speak, dream and ‘any attempt to restrict education, especially for immigrant workers, easy to learn to read and write, to a strictly professional training, or civic education that transforms them into good citizens, can only generate violence, whether immediate or deferred over time’ (Gelpi, 1997, p. 80).

Ettore Gelpi wants to further broaden the concept of intercultural education; achieving this coincides with an innate human condition that everyone differs from each other, not only because of language and traditions but also because of countless other individual characteristics (sex, cities, physical and character traits, interests, etc.), that argue for humans to be innately intercultural. Gelpi is the bearer of a secular and intercultural vision of education, and his secularism is understood as a real lens through which to view the world, as an instrument of emancipation and democracy.

Although intercultural education was created and developed by the issues related to large international migration, currently it does not only concern migrants but the entire living population. At least in part, the same problems and the same uncertainties of new arrivals affect everyone. Intercultural education requires a critical approach based on mutual respect between people from different cultures. With this in mind, an excerpt of a speech Gelpi in a panel discussion on cultural mediation, in 2002, at the ECAP Foundation in Zurich ¹ discusses this:

I think that today the problem of migration is not a problem of minorities, it is a problem that affects the whole population. Just because the people are restless. […] Mediations are necessary because people are uneasy about the future of their work; in a time when it is said that the work is not very important, the fact is that work is important. Immigrants and citizens of the state that host them can be restless. The need for mediation is born with the restlessness. Families are not aggressive because the other is Swiss, the other is Afghan, the other is from a country far away, they are just restless.

These words of Gelpi delineate the field of action of cultural mediation as the development of a new professional field, and as a project to help change not only in institutions in countries of origin, but also in host countries. Gelpi fits well in the discourse, which is still current on the main functions and meanings of cultural mediation: the first meaning corresponds to the real professional and institutional action of facilitating translation and communication between the country of arrival and the migrant; the second meaning concerns the mediation put in place by all those participating dynamically to aid the progress of society, to the resolution of its problems, to the construction of new rules. Many authors, such as the French psychologist Margalit Cohen Emerique, add another meaning to the term ‘cultural mediation’ specifically referring to the resolution of conflict between people from different cultures (Cohen Emerique, 2009).The south Tyrolean politician Alexander Langer puts emphasis on this aspect of mediation: in his most famous text, ‘A Tentative Decalogue for the Art of Inter-Ethnic Togetherness’, he speaks about the ‘importance of mediators, bridge builders, wall vaulters and frontier crossers’ to overcome and positively resolve ethnic conflict situations (Langer, 1994). Gelpi emphasizes, instead, the importance of the cultural element in mediation and this aspect is very important today, in a historical moment in which, unfortunately, culture and education are commodified and, consequently, no longer carry out this function. There is an ongoing attempt to pedagogically analyse culture as a tool to adapt and make people more docile in the workplace and in the community, and at the same time culture is becoming a big business, such as in education. ‘Culture has an important function, to give life to each of his emotions, but we’re killing it. That is, we are recovering and killing the culture. And I think this should make us reflect, if we think that cultural mediation is important. If we decided that football is the universal cultural mediation, it is very disturbing. Without the permanent presence of cultural figures, we run many risks of having cultural mediation without culture, because now everyone likes culture, when it is being killed. For cultural mediation, it is necessary that culture is alive and it is not limited to be a culture of museums and observations of the past. Whether it is today’s culture or the culture of tomorrow, there should be in-depth work done today. It will also be the work of many people in the future. It is absurd that we continue to produce, produce and produce, when we produce material products that will be destroyed as quickly as they are made. The illiterate peasants lived many more cultural moments and events that those who now live by and work for rich companies’ (Gelpi, 2002a, p. 173).

The first function of mediation is defending culture: without this, the associated adjectives ‘cultural’ and ‘intercultural’ make no sense. Defending the culture of life, defending the culture that leads to communication between people, enhancing the culture of all: this is the only way to assure long and lasting mediation. Everything else, all fake ‘cultures’ will die in time.

This cannot be put into practice without considering the culture of foreigners and their expressive potential, often underestimated or completely ignored. Generally, the publications on migrant workers reflect the views of the phenomenon that institutions, governments or institutions who promote such publications hold. What remains absent, most of the time, are the cultural, expressive and creative potential of the people such publications are describing. It is a necessary requirement to have ‘direct’ knowledge of the experience of migrant workers, and to effectively develop policies and activities, which respond to their questions, their needs and their expectations. This also allows a move away from a purely economic approach, which is based on the performance of migrant workers, and oriented towards compassion, sentimentality and paternalism. The education of migrant workers is thus part of the problem that goes beyond simple literacy, language training and helping to support adult migrants and their children. This question needs to be urgently addressed: ‘Should education be dependent on the countries of origin and host, or rather should there be “positive” discrimination in view of a new world order of education in which migrant workers are placed not only between beneficiaries but rather among the protagonists? It is from a rediscovery of the history of education and culture that is the main answer to this kind of education’ (Gelpi, 1983, p. 15).

Migrant people certainly arrive looking for work, but also come with experiences, hopes and desires that go beyond work itself and that involve the full value of the individual. They also carry a story and an individual and collective culture that, if properly explored, could be an important enrichment opportunity for all countries involved.

Already in 1983, Ettore Gelpi writes:

Perhaps in the existing hostility and in the rejection towards the migrant worker there is, on a subconscious level, the perception that we might all become ‘migrant’ poor. The geographical mobility within the production system increases and concerns a growing number of workers.

Intercultural education is undoubtedly linked to political will because it is located at every educational level: intercultural pedagogy is present in more specific curriculums as in the wider educational planning, in the action of the individual teacher or in the largest educational facilities. The most important intercultural relations are experienced in the workplace and in communities and in formal educational structures, each of which reflects both the violence, or the tolerance of everyday life. Therefore, intercultural education, if it wants to have a future, must relate to the educational and cultural experiences of everyday life. In this sense, it is a tough fight against everyday exclusion, in the same neighbourhood, in the same school, in the same city, or even internationally (Gelpi, 1992a).

According to Gelpi, limited learning and creative learning in migrants coexist. The limitations to their learning arise from the fact that their prior knowledge is often considered inadequate in new training environments. What is not taken into consideration is that migrants learn very quickly because they have the urgent need to acquire important skills for the new working environment, both political and social. This is not just passive learning: migrants learn to change their living conditions and to build a life in a new society in which their children can live more smoothly and peacefully. Unfortunately, this high level of their motivation is rarely met with an adequate response in formal educational institutions that judge the learning level of the foreigners just on the level of learning of the native language (Gelpi, 1990).

Some companies make a distinction between intellectual migrants and migrant workers, ‘people do not consider Picasso or Modigliani or, for the matter, artists or scientists of all kinds as “migrant workers.” At the same time, the mass movements – trade unions, cooperatives, local associations – often ignore the fact that many active members are of foreign origin, but their contribution is essential for community life’ (Gelpi, 1990, p. 137). Following a historical perspective, we can observe that migrant workers are more culturally respected when the status of the native country is high.

If it is true that education, alone, cannot change the world of work, it is also true that education can increase the possibility of access to work and can help create new jobs. If fairness was the basis of the relations between natives and immigrants, immigrants would have no reason to exist because they would have, like all other citizens, the right to culture and access to all levels of education, and they could be active participants in political life, in both production and communication. Therefore, ‘the integration of immigrants and minorities in European society is not incompatible with their organized function in education. Without this, a large number of migrant workers and local minorities could not see the respect for their linguistic rights, cultural, educational and social. One of the tasks of adult education in multicultural Europe is to guarantee the right to diversity, without excluding others. Any community that is homogeneous, monolithic and compact is the result or a rejection of the “diversity,” or of its extreme exaltation’ (Gelpi, 1997, p. 80).

Language training: A challenge for lifelong education ²

Languages are the systems of signs used by humans for communication with other people. They are the concrete and historically determined ways in which the capacity of human language manifests itself. They are the most refined and powerful instrument of symbolic representation. Languages are also a source of feeling, of sense of national and religious belonging, of identity. Everyone, in speaking or simply listening to their mother language or dialect, has the sensation of ‘feeling at home’, of moving in a familiar context. Language, culture and identity are not separable elements but, being in symbiosis, they form the unity of the person.

Generally, linguistic diversity is considered a positive element for cultural development and communication between different countries. However, the reality is very different: the border between languages can easily become a dangerous blade, used to separate those who are on this side and those who are beyond an alleged frontier, which is the result of the artifice of man who, by its nature, is not destined to learn only one language. The ‘naturally monolingual man is a modern, European and colonialist idea’ (Langer, 2005) that can be disproved by history. On the contrary, man is naturally multilingual and, since birth, has been destined to get in touch with diversity.

Going through world history, we can easily see how the imposition of a language to the exclusion of others can become an instrument to impose cultural values, to isolate social groups, to prevent revolts that could even go beyond the specific linguistic group, to trigger models of consumption (Gelpi, 1977b). The refusal of or the respect for languages does not depend on a pedagogical logic or a linguistic coherence, but it is the relations of power within communities and the interests of the different states that reinforce or discredit different linguistic expressions. ‘In colonial or neo-colonial countries, the language of the metropolis is imposed for political reasons that use pseudo-scientific criteria. In countries that welcome migrant workers, the language and culture of these workers is disregarded or misunderstood, and at the same time, in some cases, national plurilingualism is accepted, even in its dialectal expressions. Linguistics, pedagogy and learning psychology are manipulated to justify linguistic policies that change from country to country’ (Gelpi, 1977a). On the contrary, the defence of every language is a right for those who practice it and a duty for everyone because it is the common heritage of all populations.

Problems linked to linguistic pluralism completely involve migrations, because they come back to the issue of coexistence in the same territory of people speaking different languages and the issue of their integration, creating the problem of finding common languages to communicate without losing individual cultural specificities.

The starting point of a democratic linguistic policy is respect for culture and the language of immigrant workers and their families. Every immigrant is, in fact, the owner of a culture even if illiterate, a culture that is the result of a geographical, historical, cultural, social and religious conditions. Foreign language teaching to foreign students is often based on methods of teaching very similar to those imposed on native children, without considering their native language. In this way, we neglect the possibility of relying on the knowledge already acquired by foreigners, and we do not consider them as young people who propose a new language that completes, reinforces and enriches their new society, but as young people to whom a totally foreign language is imposed, ignoring or denying the assets of their native tongue.

The respect for native language is the first fundamental element of a strategy that tends to enhance the cultural experience of foreigners and a democratic linguistic pedagogy is closely linked to the type of organization of educational experiences. Access of immigrant workers to educational facilities, renewal of subject content teaching, connection of educational facilities with social reality, and the presence of qualified personnel: these are all important aspects that we must take into account for foreign users as well.

This linguistic matter is not only a technical problem but, above all, it is a cultural, social and educational issue. The cultural and linguistic dependence of foreign citizens is, unfortunately, reinforced by an impoverishment of institutional cultural life in the host communities, by the imposition of cultural messages by the mass media, by a location of educational and cultural structures in urban areas, very distant in the suburbs (Gelpi, 1977b).

Language, being the main means of communication, has enormous implications in daily life, in work, and in the possibility of participation in public life, all fundamental aspects of the existence of citizens, both native and foreign. Educational institutions, and even trade unions and cultural associations, cannot ignore the educational, cultural and work activities of people with different cultures. If they ignore these they become carriers and accomplices of an unjust dominant culture that impoverishes cultural life and social relations between national and foreign workers. Linguistic and cultural problems are not marginal and cannot only be the property of linguists and pedagogists. Participation in public life, working conditions and quality of daily life are also closely linked to linguistic and cultural policies which cannot be considered secondary aspects in the struggle of workers (Gelpi, 1977b).

Respect for the mother tongue is, therefore, the first element of a strategy aimed at enhancing the cultural experience of foreigners and of their children. This requires a deep transformation of the institutions and an effective cultural interest in the language of newcomers. The debate is usually set in terms of the problem of workers’ access to training opportunities (an important problem in itself) but not of the contrary problem: access to educational and cultural institutions of workers’ language, culture and problems. The acceptance of workers’ language requires the acceptance of their culture and a real commitment to move from one type of logic to another: struggling to move from the idea of workers’ access to education to the acceptance of workers’ culture as a real starting point for training means recognizing the true means of their cultural and linguistic expression. Workers are not very interested in accessing a training and culture in which they do not control either the purpose, the content or the modalities (Gelpi, 1977b).

The linguistic and cultural learning of workers must be, of course, be included in a framework of lifelong learning and this means, for linguistic training (native language and foreign language), to provide a formative process that does not identify with the scholastic period. In fact, language learning stops only when there is no more movement, transformation or openness towards the external world, and this is also in the native language in its different expressions. The training of immigrant workers and their children could be ‘an opportunity to evaluate the validity of hypotheses on permanent education within educational systems. If faced with the motivations, interests and training needs at every moment of life on the part of these workers and of their children, managers for educational systems do not change the planning criteria for education, the choice of contents, the recruitment and training of educators, means that, once again, the search for immediate economic results is the guiding principle of educational policies and that the pedagogical discourses maneuvered are only a new mask behind which an old practice is hidden’ (Gelpi, undated).

From the point of view of the training structures dedicated to compulsory education, the unification and the generalization of the new relationships between school, university and industry, the diffusion of initial and permanent teaching are the necessary structural transformations of the educational system that contribute to a democratization of language teaching. Bilingualism or plurilingualism must become the condition of the future European population. The problem of linguistic education exceeds that of the dramatic linguistic situation of many immigrant workers. Therefore, a great task awaits those responsible for linguistic planning and language teaching planning, and those responsible for political and cultural decisions: these are decisions of a mainly pedagogical-linguistic nature (UNESCO, 1975). New international relations at regional and world level also require coherent linguistic policies that workers can help to guide and determine through their political and cultural action (Gelpi, 1977b).

Intercultural education, human complexity and earthly home

Gelpi has not so much questioned how to educate towards cultural pluralism, but how cultural pluralism can be educational because learning to live together in cultural diversity means above all to live in an exchange with people from different cultures: a real learning opportunity. He thinks that we are all part of ‘human complexity’ ³ in which differentiations are always in constant growth linked to individual factors (language, culture, gender, age, formation, etc.) and social factors (differentiation of roles, social division and labour, economic and political development, technological development, advancement of communication systems). It is this complexity that accompanies all people every day and is part of their life, a complexity to be safeguarded and valorized as a constituent component of human beings and to be attenuated in its components derived from the iniquitous division of wealth, power and formation.

Gelpi suggests that we should address human complexity with the ‘Earth’s consciousness’. In line with the thinking of Edgar Morin (Morin, 2001; Morin & Kern, 1994), Gelpi says that there is a primary identity that unites all the people of the earth, in turn closely linked to the awareness that there is no peace without social justice and without equity in political and socio-economic relations between nations, between men and other men, and between man and Earth. Many people who have met Ettore Gelpi remember that he liked to be Italian, European and terrestrial: for him all were, at the same time, both compatriots and foreigners. Plant Earth is, in this regard, the first homeland of man, the first Heimat, the first native place to which the individual belongs, even before being part of a specific continent, of a specific nation, of a region, a city or a family. All these ‘citizenships’ are legitimate, indeed positive, but they have to relate and communicate with the primordial ‘earthly citizenship’. Gelpi’s ‘Earth Consciousness’ also encloses the idea of a strong bond with earth, with nature as the human species, with its innumerable diversity, which is only a part of its infinite variety.

Our existence suffers from major imbalances (between man and nature, between the North and the South, between riches and poverty within each society) and all these imbalances are interdependent and cannot be addressed separately because their causes are common. It is therefore paramount to build balanced relations between man and the environment, and between men in their complexity and diversity, to create a world of mutual solidarity. Education, assuming its responsibilities to humans and the Earth, can significantly evolve systems of values and behaviours and deeply innovate the way people think and act. Only with a real reflection on our ‘earthly belonging’ can we seek a change that gives priority to the human being, the environment, respect and knowledge of the cultures and values of the different populations. Gelpi proposes the original idea of a possible ‘participatory development’ able to combine peace, ecology and social development and to really respect the three principles on which the concept is based: intergenerational justice, intragenerational justice and maintenance of the ‘natural capital’ (Schettini, 2002). A good development is then founded on forms of equality and respect between all people who live in the same historic moment, even if they are in different parts of the world or if they are foreign in the place where they live, between people who life in different historical moments (our children and grandchildren), and also between us and the nature that hosts us. This development needs open and complex thinking that allows us to decipher and understand all kinds of contradictions, towards other people or the nature, in which we live.

Conclusions

At the end of this work, in which we tried to investigate, using a predominantly historical and biographical approach, the thinking of Ettore Gelpi about migrant workers, cultural and linguistic pluralism and cultural mediation, we have tried to say why his thought can be useful to help broaden the debate on intercultural and lifelong education. For Gelpi, intercultural education should not make up for a lack of education but must be used to support lifelong education even if, too often, it is reduced to a tool for ‘filling gaps’ and not as a global fact (Gelpi, 2002b). In all his thinking, he argues that education is a unique process that involves people from all ages and phases of existence (Gelpi, 1986). Then, intercultural education, as constitutive part of the educational process, should teach how cultural pluralism can be positive and educational for all people.

Intercultural education is closely linked to the ‘Earth Consciousness’ of Gelpi because it is necessary to develop new relationships of solidarity among all the inhabitants of the Earth, still far too absent from our daily lives. The ‘terrestrial’ dimension of each individual’s existence has yet to be implemented, so it is paramount to build balanced relations between man and the environment and between men in their complexity and diversity to create a world of mutual solidarity today.

Education should work, together with other socio-cultural and political forces, for a major project based on the principle of unity in diversity and diversity in unity. This is to realize the transition to thought that is really capable of relating particularity and universality, the local and the global, gathering in the stories of different people and groups that belong to humanity within a framework of common value and integral destiny.