Gulen inspired schools a place of understanding and dialogue

Since first schools and educational centers occurred in the world there have been undertaken many reforms and various efforts in order to improve system of education, by making it more effective and efficient.

However, the progressive globalization of the world posted new challenges to humanity with which man has to face. Especially, the development of technology has caused people to abandon public life, and made people stay in their own homes, making them antisocial and withdrawn. The progress is staged to test relationships and the same time showed the importance of human interaction for the co-existence of different cultures in the same place, that in fact is also a result of globalization process. In this situation, the same attempt to make efforts towards improving and bringing out teaching methods became insufficient. Therefore, in our globalized world, we feel the necessity for a specific educational system based on universal human values.

Globalization has made our societies multicultural, we live next each other among the members of different cultures and nationalities, followers of other religions, as well as users other that out language. The importance of dialog and understanding in education is a particularly important element in the process of racing a new generation, as schools are located in areas of cultural diversity. Fethullah Gulen states that coexistence of many cultures and religions in one place is possible only through dialog and consolidation. The system main strategy of his action which also seeks to exclude three biggest enemies of humanity such as: poverty, ignorance and divisions.

Gulen in his works, books, conferences and speeches especially focuses on forming a matter of human attitudes that is deformation of “ideal humans” who would be the part of the “golden generation”. Fethullah Gulen in his own way is continuator of the thought of Plato and Confucius who emphasized the special importance of education in forming ideal human beings. According to Gulen portrait of an “ideal human” will become a future of the “golden generation” that will shape the future of the world. It should be noted that the characteristics of the “golden generation” that scholar indicates, are common virtues to various religions as well as universal for people all over the world. This are: patience, tolerance, discipline, determination, strong will, faith, altruism, loyalty and solidarity.

We should appreciate the idea of dialog and agreement especially because of the past age 20, in which there were two major World Wars. Dialog is the cure for what has happened in the past, it also means to build harmonious world of today, as well it has also future dimension of building future peaceful place to live in.

The most important I could say evidence of the effectiveness of educational system inspired by Gulen is that currently there are schools in more than 140 countries around the world, which has a good reputation because of the principles they use: respect for different cultures and differences, respect for other and brotherhood. These schools operate and grow rapidly and they have been labeled as “islands of peace” and also “bridges of peace”.

Published on fethullah-gulen.org