With the notion of relevance, a perspective of the past and a
direction for the future are suggested. That literacy-based
education, at its inception, was xenophobic or racist, and
obviously political, nobody has to tell us. Individuals from
outside the polis, speaking a different mother tongue, were
educated for a political reason: to make them useful to the
community as soon as possible. Conditions for education changed
dramatically over time, but the political dimension remains as
strong as ever. This is why it can only help to dispense with
certain literate attitudes expressing national, ethnic, racial,
or similar ambitions. It is irrelevant whether Pythagoras was
Greek and whether his geometry was original with him. It is
irrelevant whether one or another person from one or another
part of the world can be credited with a literary contribution,
a work of art, or a religious or philosophic thought. What counts
is how such accomplishments became relevant to the people of the
world as they involved themselves in increasingly complex
practical experiences. Moreover, our own sense of value does not
rest on a sports-driven model-the first, the most, the best-but
on the challenge posed by how each of us will constitute his own
identity in unprecedented circumstances of work, leisure, and
feeling. Relevance applies to the perspective of the future and
to the recognition that experiences of the past are less and less
pertinent in the new context.
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