Topics for the World Forum “Human Education in the 3-rd Millennium”
I. Policy (Educational reforms: what modern educational policy really means? What educational policy should contain in order to provide what people and their societies need)
1) Market, network and state models of education (What are the main differences between market, business and education domains, between market values and education values?) Different education governance models, and how they do and do not endure that the public interest is protected.
2) How should we understand the relationships between education and work? The limitations of neoliberal models and education policy focused on economic production.Tendencies for education to be incorporated into the interests of global and cognitive capitalism and neoliberalism, so that technical skills and capacities (eg for 'entrepreneurialism') are played up and human qualities and human understandings are neglected.
3) Dangerous trends (How contemporary dangerous trends for humanity are met by education? or - How education may lead to threats and risks to existing dominant life forms, especially the manmade disasters? Matters of ecology as matters for the whole of society and for all of education, for research, for programmes of study in all disciplines and for educational institutions, not least in their use of scarce resources. A caring attitude towards nature and an understanding of nature as a living co-world, Mitwelt as needed contribution into a change of human mentality.)
4) To what degree is education a shared and global responsibility?
5) Social world (Which world do we build by today’s education?)
II. Democracy(Why is public participation in matters of education important? And how can it be ensured? Mission of education for democracy)
6) The role of technocratic cultures and elites as drivers of education governance.
7) Identification and acknowledgement of the inherent tension between democracy and neoliberalism.
8) How to bring education matters to a wider, non-technical audience or group of stakeholders so that citizens can participate directly in matters of public interest?
9) Empowering young people and adults to be as critically engaged citizens.
10) Autonomy of the educational system. How realistic is it? To what degree is it essential?
11) The specific role of the universities, particularly in their research and in academics becoming 'public intellectuals' - in their powers to reach out into society and help to advance the public sphere and improve the extent of rational decision-making in society.
III. Being human(Is there a need to remember or to discover human nature as the basis of human education?)
12) Being human. (What does it mean to be human specifically ? How should education correspond these specific human features?)
13) Human identities, diversity (How can diversity be protected and preserved in the context of globalized standardized education?)
14) Reconsideringaims of education: the concepts of 'wellbeing', 'happiness', human 'flourishing' considered as aims and their implications for the modern mentality. What are the alternatives?
15) Inner values (Why and how should inner values, such as empathy, love and caring, cooperation, solidarity, justice, compassion and wisdom be part of the educational curriculum?)
16) Valuing peace (Does education teach through hidden curriculum, etc. peace or warlike attitudes, negative perception of others, violence and its base, which are injustice, exclusion, etc.? How can education realistically advance peace, global cooperation, and respect for human rights in the face of conflict, exclusion, competing national interests? )
17) Being human in relations with other living beings (Role, position, and place of other beings in human society as a matter for education)
18) Posthuman perspectives (What does posthuman future introduce into today’s education? In face of the end of humans and environmental crisis. Technocratizationas a problem for education. Being human in a digital age. The possibilities, limitations, threats/ challenges of human education in a digital age).
IV. Pedagogy(What might a human-centered education look like?)
19) Traditional understandings of education. Different perspectives then and now around how we understand human education in the different traditions: North and South, East and West (pedagogical influence of geo-politics of knowledge and education)
20) Equality not as an aim but as a principle of education.
21) The role of alterity for education as such (Teaching and studying an understanding and coping with alterity. A comprehensive relationship with the other).
22) Different kinds of knowledge in education: scientific knowledge, personal knowledge, body-knowledge, practical knowledge, aesthetic knowledge; tacit or implicit knowledge.
23) Education and thinking (Is it possible / desirable / needed to teach to think? Learning to think by oneself with others. Philosophical dialogue, childhood, a new philosophy in education.) Education for wisdom (inquiry learning; judgment; understanding; the role of critical thinking; empathic moral inquiry in education).
24) Cultural learning.
25) How humanity can survive under the circumstances, where the humanities are disregarded and departments and programmes in the humanities are being closed? The place of the humanities vis-a-vis science and technology (so-called STEM disciplines).
26) Education as experiential: self-transformation, self-development, self-formation. Education and transformation.
27) Agonistic pedagogy and other approaches. The oppressed and education for emancipation (intellectual, i.e. individual; social; political).
28) Education as a development of sense and attitude of personal universal responsibility (maturity)
29) Education, friendship, love.
30) Modern moral education (What are the limits and optimal methods of moral education?)
31) The role (for a human-centered education) of imagination; of sensory, emotional, moral feelings; of inner experience, particularly of empathy; development of reflexive and contemplative experience.
32) New educational forms of life other than formal schooling and other educational institutions, not dominated by chronological order, performativity, efficientization. The aims and means of various forms of education as practiced throughout history and in various contexts, will be discussed and critically evaluated.
33) The problem of time for education (Chronological versus aionic and kairotic time. Teaching and giving time. Teaching in the present. School and free-time)