5 An Appeal to Universities: For a Common Knowledge
A common pedagogical trunk that would bring together, little by little, all men, beginning with students, would favour the advancement of peace. So can we imagine the universities of the world devoting the first year of instruction to a programme that would allow students of every discipline and every country to have a similar horizon of knowledge and culture? These students would, in their turn, propagate it.
This general framework is inspired by the two following points:
• The hard sciences have already attained, like a white map, universality; they follow here the evolution of the chronopedia.
• Cultures, for their part, form a mosaic map of diverse forms and colours. Pedagogy assimilates the whole of these differences.
This framework is divided into three parts, one of which is reserved for the specialty of the studies undertaken (medicine, law, sciences or humanities) and the two others for this common programme.
The Common Programme: For the First Year of University
I. The Standard Programme for the Specialty
II. The Unitary Grand Narrative of Every Science
Elementary physics and astrophysics: the formation of the Universe from the big bang to the cooling of the planets.
Elementary geophysics, chemistry and biology: from the birth of the Earth to the appearance of life and the evolution of species.
Elementary general anthropology: the emergence and spread of the human race.
Elementary agronomy, medicine and the passage to culture: the relationship of men to the Earth, to life, to humanity itself.
III. The Mosaic of Human Cultures
Elementary general linguistics: the geography and history of language families.
The languages of communication: their evolution.
Elementary history of religion: polytheisms, monotheisms, pantheisms, atheisms.
Elementary political science: the different types of government. Elementary economics: the division of wealth in the world.
Selected masterpieces of the fine arts and wisdoms. Sites: the heritage of humanity according to UNESCO.