Left to right: Speakers Georges Haddad (left), Yaacov Hecht (right), on either side of the two moderators. On Monday, November 7, at the preceding session on 'democracy, equality and education' of the World Forum for Democracy 2016, which looked at the 'Global trends', Joan Hoey of The Economist Intelligence Unit told the participants in a packed Council of Europe hemicycle that the gap between elites and the people is still growing, and that there is a decline of belief in democracy accompanied by a curbing of civil liberties. From Pew Researcher Richard Wike, on the eve of the US election result, we learned that 37% of Americans think Hillary Clinton doesn’t respect democracy, while a majority of Americans believe the same is true for Donald Trump.
The French Minister of Education, Higher Education and Research, Ms Najat Vallaud-Belkacem had opened proceedings with the remark that what we had learned over the most recent period was that democracies were 'mortal' and could be reversed. Against this background of unease, the two keynote speakers in the opening plenary of the World Forum for Democracy 2016 – Georges Haddad, President of the University Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in France and Yaacov Hecht, Pioneer of democratic education and CEO of "Education Cities - the Art of Collaborations” in Israel, treated us to an overview of the challenges that confront education today. This video, combining excerpts from their opening presentations and responses to the Q & A, and the four themes below, gives you a glimpse of the fruitful exchange that emerged between these two speakers. (34 minutes).
