Probeklausur Globalization

Grundkurs


1. Point out UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's view of global values. (Comprehen­sion)
2. Analyse how Annan tries to make his speech effective. Pay particular attention to the use of rhetorical devices. (Analysis)
3. You have a choice here. Choose one of the following tasks:
3.1 Comment on Kofi Annan's position that globalisation must be based on global values. Discuss the chances of the realization of such a view on the background of the current debate on globalisation, giving a few examples and referring to any relevant elements of the American Dream. (Evaluation: comment)
3.2 Your school takes part in an exchange programme with an American high-school. Your school is holding a formal debate with German and American students about whether Kofi Annan's view of globalisation and moral values is realistic. Write an introductory statement to open this debate from the point of view of a German participant. (Evaluation: re-creation of text)
Materialgrundlage

Ausgangstext: Sach- und Gebrauchstext (öffentliche Rede: politische Rede – Aus­zug)

Fundstelle des Textes: Kofi Annan, Do We Still Have Universal Values? Tübingen University, 12 December 2003 (www.weltethos.org/st_9_xx/9_151.htm)

Wortzahl: 599 Wörter

Aufgabenstellung:
1. Point out UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's view of global values. (Comprehen­sion)
2. Analyse how Annan tries to make his speech effective. Pay particular attention to the use of rhetorical devices. (Analysis)
3. You have a choice here. Choose one of the following tasks:
3.1 Comment on Kofi Annan's position that globalisation must be based on global values. Discuss the chances of the realization of such a view on the background of the current debate on globalisation, giving a few examples and referring to any relevant elements of the American Dream. (Evaluation: comment)
3.2 Your school takes part in an exchange programme with an American high-school. Your school is holding a formal debate with German and American students about whether Kofi Annan's view of globalisation and moral values is realistic. Write an introductory statement to open this debate from the point of view of a
German participant. (Evaluation: re-creation of text)

Text:
"Do We Still Have Universal Values?"
Extract from a speech given by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for the Global Eth­ics Foundation at Tübingen University, Germany, on 12 December 2003

Today, as globalisation brings us all closer together, and our lives are affected almost instantly by things that people say and do on the far side of the world, we also feel the need to live as a global community. And we can do so only if we have global values to bind us together.
But recent events have shown that we cannot take our global values for granted. I sense a great deal of anxiety around the world that the fabric of international relations may be starting to unravel - and that globalisation itself may be in jeopardy.
Globalisation has brought great opportunities, but also many new stresses and disloca­tions. There is a backlash against it – precisely because we have not managed it in ac­cordance with the universal values we claim to believe in.
In the Universal Declaration, we proclaimed that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services".
Just three years ago, in the Millennium Declaration, all states reaffirmed certain fun­damental values as being "essential to international relations in the twenty-first century": freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility. They adopted practical, achievable targets – the Millennium Development Goals – for re­lieving the blight of extreme poverty and making such rights as education, basic health care and clean water a reality for all.
Many millions of people in the world today are still far from enjoying these rights in practice. That could be changed, if governments in both rich and poor countries lived up to their commitments. Yet, three years after the Millennium Declaration, our attention is
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focused on issues of war and peace, and we are in danger of forgetting these solemn commitments to fulfil basic human rights and human needs.
Globalisation has brought us closer together in the sense that we are all affected by each other's actions, but not in the sense that we all share the benefits and the burdens. Instead, we have allowed it to drive us further apart, increasing the disparities in wealth and power both between societies and within them.
This makes a mockery of universal values. It is not surprising that, in the backlash, those values have come under attack, at the very moment when we most need them.
Whether one looks at peace and security, at trade and markets, or at social and cul­tural attitudes, we seem to be in danger of living in an age of mutual distrust, fear and protectionism – an age when people turn in on themselves, instead of turning outwards to exchange with, and learn from, each other.
Disillusioned with globalisation, many people have retreated into narrower interpreta­tions of community. This in turn leads to conflicting value systems, which encourage people to exclude some of their fellow human beings from the scope of their empathy and solidarity, because they do not share the same religious or political beliefs, or cul­tural heritage, or even skin colour.
We have seen what disastrous consequences such particularist value systems can have: ethnic cleansing, genocide, terrorism, and the spread of fear, hatred and discrimi­nation.
So this is a time to reassert our universal values.
We must firmly condemn the cold-blooded nihilism of attacks such as those that struck the United States on 11 September 2001. But we must not allow them to provoke a "clash of civilisations", in which millions of flesh-and-blood human beings fall victim to a battle between two abstractions – "Islam" and "the West" – as if Islamic and western val­ues were incompatible.
Anmerkungen:

Universal Declaration: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948, ap­proved by all members of the United Nations; Millennium Declaration: reaffirmation of fun­damental global rights approved by all UN member states in 2000; 11 September 2001: date of the terrorist attack on the USA, with two planes crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York