And what really matters, the excluded will be included, and the unreachable will be reached. Education empowers every woman and man to master their own lives, to act according to their own models and values and to avoid ones imposed from outside, often as a condition for financing. Too much education in our inherited culture of war has focused up until now, on narrow messages of nationalism and even chauvinism. Our history books celebrate battles and generals without paying due attention to those whose thoughts and actions created the economic, scientific, cultural and indeed, agricultural, breakthroughs which can bring societies together and advance the human agenda for us all. It would be a poor outcome if we moved only from a Cold War to a Cold Peace.
Universities have a particular role here.
How indeed can we train the teachers, even of the youngest children, without giving them the knowledge both intellectual and scientific to confront the immense possibilities of our own time and to try to begin to solve the equally dramatic tragedies that often dominate the headlines. These were the impossibles of a few years ago. In science and the humanities, throughout any university programme, researchers and students are busy trying to grasp the importance of the intangibles that shape our lives. At the same time, no accurate representation of the world, be it in science or political science, can avoid grappling with complexity. Our world is not simple and simple solutions almost always mislead.