ABSTRACT
Education should help young people to acquire a better knowledge of the world and its inhabitants and form attitudes which develop in them a spirit of appreciation and mutual respect for other cultures, races and lifestyles. The Geneva recommendation and the European Economic Community directive use no specific terminology when describing the objectives. The Dublin resolution and Recommendation R (84) 18 explicitly refer to intercultural education. Moreover, sociologists, politicians of all tendencies, educational theorists and teachers employ, either indiscriminately or with different meanings, various terms with the same root 'cultural' but with different prefixes: 'multi', 'pluri', 'inter', 'trans'. Many emigrant countries organise courses in the language and culture of origin for their nationals, often in collaboration with the host countries. Where the school has authentic intercultural teaching, the teachers of minority languages and cultures can play an extremely important role, in so far as their courses are properly integrated into the activities as a whole.
