Call for Papers - Reimagining the Education of Humanity for the Third Millennium

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About the Organization

With ‘towards a just, equitable, humane, and sustainable society’ as the vision, the Azim Premji  Foundation is building a network of universities to contribute to the social sector. One of the key objectives of these universities is to run teaching programmes to develop competent and motivated young people to work in the social sector. The other is to carry out research in areas allied to the Foundation’s vision of a just, equitable, humane, and sustainable society.

About the Call for Paper

This third millennium presents a situation that includes global interdependence across major human and non-human ecosystems, life with radical uncertainty, and global crises. In the face of common threats to the Earth and societies, education needs to be rethought. As educators, we have the responsibility to develop a conception of education of humanity. “Humanity” should be thought of as a human multidimensionality and the presence of society in education rather than limited approaches founded on the economy and technology. “Education” should not imply a market service, but instead a basic human right and a foundation for sustainable, inclusive, and just development (as understood by UNESCO). Along with this, the education of humanity should not place humans at the centre of the universe but should be centered on human responsibility and humaneness.

Characteristically, education is overly manoeuvered by the political sphere. Politicians sometimes try to divide humanity, in particular via and in education, pitting peoples against each other. In contrast, we need solidarity, and we here are united in our basic positions on education. While humans create problems, largely due to the pursuit of individual, corporate, and collective self-interest, they can also address problems through human capabilities and commitment to the good of humanity. Education is obliged, and now to an even greater extent, to contribute to this solution. We believe that a transformed set of educational institutions, curricula and pedagogies can help meet the challenges that face humanity, human societies and the planet.

Observations

• The current shaping of education has been largely influenced by the notion of the human person as an economic being, undervaluing other human dimensions. This positions education as seemingly neutral and apolitical, divorced from its role in developing human beings and civic-minded community builders;
• Education policies throughout the world are increasingly imbued with managerialist, commercial and state-sponsored ideologies, depriving educators of professional and academic autonomy and reducing teachers and students to suppliers and consumers. The impact of this is evident in privileging performance management, proceduralism, over-testing regimes with metrics-driven approaches, technocratic efficiencies, and surveillance-led accountability structures;
• The crisis of the humanities and social sciences in education, resulting from an undue focus on commercially-led science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) minimises attention to the lives of persons and society;
• Nation states limit the sphere of freedoms of teachers and students, schools and universities, and educators do not always exploit the limited freedoms available to them. Instead of initiative, conformity is encouraged and developed in educational systems. It is this character of education that should be changed;
• Education systems often do not exhibit value positions that clearly oppose hatred of others, violence, nationalism and wars and sometimes even promote them;
• The rise of populism steers people into conspiracy theories, xenophobia and chauvinistic sentiments towards other peoples, leading to cleavages in societies;
• Media platforms that build profit on conflicts, hate propaganda, myths and ideologies, contribute to heightened fanaticism and confrontation within and across countries;
• Political illiteracy and lack of understanding of the meaning of democracy contribute to the erosion of democratic principles and institutions, as well as the rise of authoritarianism in many societies;
• Education systems do not sufficiently prepare people to question the world, functioning increasingly to produce managed persons;
• The failure to address fundamental human values, ethics, and caring results in part from an education grounded largely in instrumental purposes;
• Much of education does not respond adequately to the climate and ecological crises and does not enable students to understand how human-centric humanity is destroying other species, nature and, in the process, making the Earth uninhabitable;
• Cultural and economic colonisation continues in many parts of the world. Education reflects linguistic and other manifestations of this colonisation. A globalised culture originating from the Enlightenment values rationalism and scientific reason, and more recently, economic reason as the main driver of progress. Education imbued with these values has turned out to be unduly individualistic, present-centred, and limited by an instrumental rationality that separates the human from the non-human world. It lacks, in addition to scientific reason, meanings inspired by ideals and the long-term interconnected prospects of humanity and the Earth. These are also the values of indigenous and early culture traditions, which are more concerned with community, nature, feelings, and care.

How to Apply

Submission dates for proposals extended until September 15th 2024  Read more

Email: GlobalForum25@apu.edu.in

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