Education as Transcultural Education: A Global Challenge

In all European countries, education has been related to nation building. It has contributed to the building of national identity, national consciousness and the development of a nation state. Since the Second World War and above all since the fall of the Berlin Wall, education in the European Union has also included a consideration of European and cultural diversity. Culture does not designate a self-contained, uniquely definable ensemble of practices, values, symbolizations and imaginations. The borders between cultures are dynamic and change according to context. Globalization must be understood as a pro-cess in which two global developmental tendencies that define the present are advancing reciprocally in a manner that is not without conflict. One tendency is toward universal standardization of the world; the other tendency is toward provision of room for cultural diversity in the process. Both tendencies also create new forms of globalization. The mission of transcultural education is contact with the other and with alterity in a manner that is free of violence. Within the scope of transcultural education, the terms differentiation, transfor