Since 1955 Intercultura (a Partner of AFS Intercultural Programs) has developed in Italy a model of education to cosmopolitanism through the exposure of individual adolescents to life in a family and a school of another country for an extended period of time. Every year Intercultura sends over 1,500 secondary school pupils to live this experience abroad and it hosts over 1,000 foreign pupils in Italian families and schools.
In the course of these experiences young people become aware of a great variety of cultural, historical and social perspectives and may gain respect for others through knowledge and confrontation. It is a concrete translation into practice of UNESCO’s suggestion: “A guided immersion into another culture is one possible itinerary towards intercultural education and overcoming eurocentrism”.
On this topic the Intercultura Foundation has already organised an international conference in 2011: “Reconciling Babel – Education for Cosmopolitanism”. It ended with the recognition that “Cosmopolitanism is a necessity, not a utopia”, and that we should search for tools that help human beings to learn from one another and grow in harmony.
Today digital tools and social networks have created a web of world-wide connections, that might be one of such tools. But their use is ambivalent. On one hand they generate the feeling that physical interaction may no longer be necessary in order to get to know another reality and that distance may be an irrelevant or marginal factor when approaching another culture. On the other hand they make it more difficult to detach oneself from one’s own environment and to benefit from a full immersion in another country. This ambivalence rises many questions.
How are these tools used, especially by young people? How do they create a texture of continuous multiple communication? How do they favour or impede physical interaction between people from different cultures, and intercultural learning? How do digital learning and real life experiences integrate or diverge?
The Intercultura Foundation has invited scholars and practitioners to an international conference on these topics.
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