2.4.1 Introduction
Education is a universal right, which all nations in the world must strive to ensure and promote. This duty falls heavily on cities, as the returns to education are vital for the survival of urban areas. Higher educational attainment correlates with increased productivity and innovation, leading to the increased capability of communities to sustain themselves. Conversely, lack of education increases the incidence of poverty and depresses positive social and economic activity.

Proper education increases the value of individuals and, aggregated, the value of their communities, not only to themselves but also to those around them. Increased education increases the amount of choices available and tends to increase harmony within the community, not least of which manifests itself in lower unemployment, crime rates and poverty. Barriers to education come in many forms, some overt and some manifest in the system of formal and informal rules and mores of a society. These barriers entail not only denial to traditional modes of education, i.e. access to classroom participation or school registration, but have grown to include denial to modern forms of learning tools as well, such as the internet and information technology. Cities, as the economic engines of Europe and elsewhere, stand the greatest challenge to providing this service.

To ensure that all groups have equal access to education, city managers must continuously monitor, evaluate and re-evaluate practices and devise innovative ways to incorporate new dimensions into educational policies. Changing demographics across the world and the rise of the information age create enormous fiscal and ethical strains on administrations; however these strains should be viewed as opportunities to devise new approaches and strategies.

Public education is the most important aspect of a proactive urban management strategy. Without it, no other progress can be sustainably achieved and no movement effectively activated, nothing is more true than in the realm of sustainable urban management. In assessing the needs of communities to access educational opportunities, two issues must be addressed: 1) what groups typically suffer from lack of access to education, and 2) what sort of education provides for sustainable communities.

2.4.2 Exclusion from educational opportunities
Barriers to education are not always overt, and can sometimes be ignored by both public officials and the public, including the affected public themselves. Over time, the participation rates of various groups have changed. For instance, more young women today stay in secondary education longer than their male counterparts across Europe (1,2). On the other hand, more male students tend to leave education earlier to enter the workforce, with the highest percentage of early school leavers in Turkey and the lowest in Poland. Thus, women today make up the majority of university students across Europe. Additionally, the effects of policies over the course of a century in Europe, with emphasis placed on equity and access to all, has transformed the demographics of education dramatically within one generation. In Belgium, for instance, the percentage of men and women aged 55-64 with at least upper secondary education in 2005 was 52% and 43% respectively; for 25 to 34 year olds, by contrast, the figures were 78% and 82%. Within a generation, the relative bargaining power, educationally speaking, of women has changed dramatically, with the biggest gains in Southern European states.
Despite this, there is still much to be done to reach full educational participation across the continent and throughout Europe’s cities. Maximizing the capacity of today’s urban communities is crucial to maintaining the stability of tomorrow’s communities. The young workers of today will be required to be more productive than their parent’s generation in order to continue financing particular social benefits (i.e. pensions, etc) while ensuring that environmental promises are kept. In essence, the youth of today must tackle the monumental challenge of maintaining their parent’s generation while tackling centuries of environmental degradation and destruction. The key to achieving this end is education. (3,4)

2.4.2.1 The poor
The poor typically suffer the worst educational deprivation. This may be due to life choices, or to structural or cultural discrimination and barriers. Life choices include stopping schooling or reducing the length of education (i.e. opting for technical or occupational training) in order to enter the labour force. The choices can be voluntary or out of necessity – i.e. quitting school to provide extra income for family needs, early teenage pregnancy, lack of optimism regarding future opportunities, etc. Additionally, impoverished children and adults typically cannot access the facilities and resources to which their wealthier counterparts may have greater access and more encouragement to attend.

Urban policy makers must formulate clear and effective strategies to combat social exclusion of lower classes, and these may include more than simply increased spending on textbooks. Investment in teacher training projects to deal specifically with vulnerable groups, promotion of parent-teacher organizations to foster closer ties for coherent strategies, subsidization and other financial support for lower income students from private academic institutions, and wider involvement of private organizations and corporations in public education are all ways in which policy makers and practitioners can make small differences create big changes.

2.4.2.2 Special needs
People with special needs are, as a matter of circumstance, often the most disadvantaged members of society. Left unchecked, this can result in severe barriers to equal education and opportunity. A perceived lack of ability tends to alienate them from both social and economic opportunities, which can lead to a cascading effect of lower self-esteem and institutionalised patronization. Such special needs can take many forms including:

• Physical challenges– i.e. sensory impairments, loss of movement ability or motor functions, etc.
• Mental challenges– i.e. learning disabilities such as dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, autism, etc.

Special needs can lead to decreased access to education, as they may not be able to receive specialized eduction tailored to their needs. Or people with speical needs may feel reluctant to overcome real or perceived social barriers to education and may remove themselves from the system.

2.4.2.3 Ethnic and racial minorities
With the increase in immigration throughout Europe, primarily in urban areas, academic institutions are finding it necessary to adjust their teaching practices to fit the needs of their changing populations.

A project conducted by Aarde-Werk (Earth Work) in Southern Holland illustrates the power of community action in terms of both inclusion and sustainable development. The goal was to provide environmental education to ethnic minorities and to introduce sustainable practices. Due to the large number of persons in the area whose mother tongue was not Dutch, photographs and visual aids were used to provide easier understanding of concepts such as:

• increasing conscientious behaviour regarding energy, water, indoor climate and waste;
• intensifying the involvement of occupants in their housing and residential environment;
• bringing about emancipation of Dutch citizens of foreign extraction;
• establishing cooperation between nature/environmental education organisations and organisations representing ethnic minorities.

Volunteers were trained to be coaches and then dispersed into their communities with the aim of imparting sustainable education to their respective students in community centres, language classes and elsewhere. (5)

2.4.2.4 Adults and the elderly
The growing elderly population also has implications for education. Continuous education into the adult years of life has become increasingly important as regions become absorbed into the information age. It is therefore important that even those who have left academic life retain access to training and education which will keep urban areas competitive and aware of the latest developments in science and technology (1). Today, and increasingly into the future, elderly populations require increased attention in re-education and refreshing skills to match a lifetime of experience. Indeed, the combination of experience from older workers and innovation from younger, inexperienced workers provides communities with a unique opportunity. Given other demographic trends and the weight which older generations place on the working population (i.e. retirement benefits, healthcare, etc.), it will be necessary to create opportunities for older workers to stay in the labour force longer and increase their productivity.

2.4.3 The information economy and education
Information technology has greatly transformed the way cities do business over the past 50 years and will continue to do so. To keep up with the rapid pace of innovation and communication, many city managers and municipal officials have taken steps to invest in communities across social and economic divides and provide education and support for the acquisition of state of the art skills. This knowledge-based society is ultimately reliant on the development of human capital, which in turn depends on those who set the standards by which communities are taught.

The Greek School Network is an EU funded project bringing together the most advanced information and communications technology products and skills to develop an innovative educational network in Greece. Schools participating in the project obtain computers and local network hardware tailored to their specific educational needs. The programme provides network connectivity to these laboratories through a complex communication infrastructure, which includes a backbone network, a decentralised distribution network that interconnects points of presence with the backbone network, and an access network that interconnects users to the nearest point of presence.

The project also provides telemetric services for education, collaboration and communication to its users. Finally, GSN users also benefit from educational content, provided through a portal specifically designed for the needs of the project. This includes articles and information, teaching material, software tools for the preparation of classes and the monitoring of students, useful links, news, etc. At a more advanced level, the project will also facilitate asynchronous open distance learning, teleconferencing, and video on demand (VoD). The project marks an important strategy to connect primary and secondary schools with administrative and ministerial sectors, increasing familiarity with the latest technologies as well as facilitating greater interaction across social and economic strata (5).

Another example is the Dutch organisation “Bewonerscollectief Prins Hendrikstraat en Omgeving” which has given free computers to ethnic minority families in the Zeehelden district of The Hague to engage the issue of educational deficiencies in these groups. The project primarily targets single mothers with little or no knowledge of Dutch, whose children have difficulty entering academic institutions. Local teachers identify households which fit the criteria. Computers are then installed with internet and language education programmes. A total of 275 computers are currently listed in use by some 1,300 persons in the project area with a total cost to the government of around 2,000 euros (5).

2.4.4 Consolidating education – the need for a central motivation in education
Modern education has been and continues to move towards sustainable development issues; however there remains a lag regarding the need to place bios (life) at the centre of education, which is the catalyst for cultural and social change. As education is the core of community development, it represents the most pressing and long-term commitment to any progress to restore the natural order of human activity by nurturing a community's ability to sustain life without jeopardizing it – a balanced equation. This can be seen happening with the integration of more risk-management strategies, environmentally sensitive disciplines, and integrated policies throughout the world and especially in Europe. This should be expedited and effectively moved into policy as a coherent and identifiable aim that is not simply a chance result of human activity but a management method which sustains life by focusing curriculum on the biocentric core of human activities.

Education is more than a conduit for building a capable community; it also serves as a means to incorporate people into a chosen identity. Civic education is a prime example of this strategy, where national identity is fortified at the early stages of development and carried through to the later years through mandatory education. Such “programming” is extremely valuable as it maintains a solidarity in communities and instils a sense of pride and identity which form the basis of healthy societies.

Anthropocentric ethics are an unacceptable means of overcoming the current environmental crisis. Biocentric values have existed in all historical epochs, either at the level of individual consciousness or art creation, and there have been unsuccessful and desperate attempts to include biocentric values in social activity. The question presents itself as to whether biocentric ethics can be a natural basis for human consciousness and behaviour. Biocentric ethics are being formed in our modern epoch as a system of principles reflecting the human, environmentally- approved existence within the systems of the planet. Formulating the principles of biocentric ethics and their cultural interpretation will take a long time. Bio-education must speed up this process; its general aim consists of introducing the concepts of environmental conditions as inner factors of social progress for human beings and the social structures of their activities (6).

Education must develop a holistic perspective that incorporates an environmental ethic, emphasises self-sustainability and integrates cultural differences. In this way humanity can be part of, rather than separated from, nature. On the other hand, not changing will only aggravate the present crisis (7).

2.4.5 References

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