Educating Through Diversity to Counter Dehumanization

In recent years, Europe has witnessed an alarming rise in hate speech. These discourses not only circulate on social media or in extremist demonstrations, but have become embedded in institutions, the media, and public policy. An illustrative example occurred in July 2025 in Torre Pacheco, Spain: neo-Nazi groups launched what could only be described as “hunts” against Maghrebi individuals, attacking young people in public spaces, in their neighborhoods, and at their workplaces (1). These assaults were encouraged by a sustained campaign of agitation promoted by far-right parties, which for weeks spread falsehoods and hate speech through social media networks and local press, falsely linking migrant communities to crime and public safety issues. Rather than condemning these actions, some institutional representatives amplified racist narratives, thereby contributing to the normalization of racist violence. Media coverage, with few exceptions, downplayed the severity of the events or framed them as “gang clashes,” effectively erasing the ideological and racist nature of the attacks.

This episode starkly illustrates the continuous growing of a culture of dehumanization. Following the ideas of Frantz Fanon (1952) and decolonial thinkers (2), by dehumanization we refer here to a set of practices, discourses, and social structures that deny certain groups their dignity and humanity, legitimizing their exclusion, violence, or erasure. These are not isolated incidents, but rather symptoms of a systemic logic that permeates institutions, media, legislation, and everyday interactions. This is evident, for example, in the media treatment of the genocide in Palestine or of those who die crossing the Mediterranean sea—deaths that are normalized and barely make the headlines.  In contrast, there is an overexposure of tragedies involving white Western victims. It is also apparent in racial profiling by police, where certain bodies are automatically treated as suspects, or in public service offices, where migrants are routinely ignored or mistreated. 

In the face of the rise in hate speech and the persistence of exclusionary logics, there is an urgent need for a structural educational and political response to racism and other forms of discrimination. European education systems must move beyond monocultural or assimilationist approaches and advance toward a comprehensive understanding of diversity. They must be able to support individuals in understanding the historical, geopolitical, and cultural roots that have sustained the notion that some lives, cultures, or identities are worth more than others. This means recognizing diversity not as an exception to be managed, but as a constitutive condition of our societies and a legitimate source of knowledge, memory, and well-being. Only from this perspective will it be possible to envision an education that does not reproduce hierarchies of oppression, but rather helps dismantle them. Such a response must go beyond symbolic gestures or isolated interventions; it must be sustained, cross-cutting, and institutionally embedded at both local and national levels.

In this context, the concept known as Cultural Awareness and Expression (CAE) gains particular relevance, as it has been defined since 2006 as one of the Eight Key Competences for Lifelong Learning—considered essential for personal development, social inclusion, active citizenship, and employment across Europe. Put simply, CAE encourages individuals to recognize, value, and express diverse worldviews, cultural practices, and symbolic expressions. It goes beyond mere tolerance to embrace intercultural engagement and expressive capacity. At the level of attitudes, it involves active openness to the unknown, critical curiosity toward pluralism, and meaningful participation in cultural practices informed by ethical and reflective awareness of cultural and symbolic belonging.

Evidently, the concept of Cultural Awareness and Expression did not emerge in a vacuum; rather, it draws from a long-standing genealogy of pedagogical traditions—artistic, community-based, critical, and intercultural—that for decades have promoted cultural diversity as a core educational principle. Its inclusion in the European framework of key competences for lifelong learning presents a strategic opportunity: to serve as a tool for designing, justifying, and influencing educational, cultural, and artistic projects, particularly in relation to funding bodies and institutional decision-making spaces. Far from replacing what already takes place in classrooms, schools, and territorial practices, CAE draws strength from those experiences, proposing a shared framework to enhance their visibility, articulation, and institutional consolidation.

This is the context in which PULSE-ART emerges. This project places CAE at its core, aiming to create a knowledge base and practical tools to foster this competence through arts-based education. Beyond being one of the core forms of expression recognized within CAE, art is itself a powerful pedagogical tool for engaging with diversity. Across various critical traditions, it has been argued that the arts not only enrich expressive capacities, but also promote divergent thinking, spark the imagination of alternative realities, and offer embodied experiences that foster ethical connections between individuals. Thinkers such as Elliot Eisner, Maxine Greene, and bell hooks (3) have all emphasized the power of the arts to expand cognitive horizons, activate empathy, and support processes of individual and collective transformation. When practiced critically, the arts not only challenge hegemonic discourses, but also open cracks through which norms can be questioned, dominant epistemologies disrupted, and new imaginaries made possible.

This is why we believe it is essential to support, strengthen, and document artistic methodologies that critically and effectively promote CAE. These practices must be resourced, institutionally legitimized, and connected with broader educational networks. The goal is not simply to incorporate diverse content, but to transform the very frameworks through which we learn, live together, and narrate ourselves as a society. This means revisiting curricula, inclusion policies, teacher training, and institutional norms through a critical, intersectional, and antiracist lens. 

In the face of narratives of hatred and dehumanization, we choose art as a tool and practice of collective imagination. At PULSE-ART, we stand for the possibility of living in societies where all lives matter, where every story can be told, and where diversity is not feared, but embraced as shared strength.