Education as a Process and Result (original) (raw)
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A Revolution and a New Paradigm in Education
Cadmus Journal, 2013
Knowledge is the sustenance of civilization and culture. Language is the instrument for mental comprehension and transmission of knowledge. Education is the means by which each generation passes on to the next in a concentrated, systematic manner the cumulative knowledge and wisdom acquired in the past. Of all the technologies developed by humanity, none is as powerful and sophisticated as the means we have fashioned to gather, organize, store, share and transmit knowledge. Education is the instrument of conscious human evolution. We are on the cusp of a revolution potentially more powerful and important than any technological or political revolution in history. An on-going revolution in Information is generating and transmitting an unprecedented range and depth of data at dazzling speed. A parallel revolution in Knowledge is processing and analyzing that information to forge new fields of study, new perspectives and a greater understanding of the world we live in. Now a revolution in Education is about to transform the way human beings learn and transmit knowledge from one person and one generation to another. After centuries of slow, methodical development, education is evolving today more rapidly than ever before.
Elements of Contemporary Process Philosophical Theory of Education and Learning
Elements of Contemporary Process Philosophical Theory of Education and Learning, 2020
Alfred North Whitehead’s (1861–1947) “Philosophy of Organism” offers an important, indeed fundamental, metaphysical system. There are many publications, including monographs, devoted to Whitehead’s metaphysics, to his approach to education and learning, and to Whiteheadian interpretations of his (systematic) approach. Why would yet another book on that topic be expedient, timely or even urgent? It is expedient because education is arguably, more than ever, the most important cultural factor. It is timely because of the need to investigate the efficacy of the process philosophical (mainly Whiteheadian) approach in the context of the contemporary situation in the field of education and learning, where artificial intelligence becomes more and more powerful. Such an investigation has never been made. Yet, it is of theoretical, as well as practical, interest for philosophers, specialists in education and learning, and scientists (especially computer scientists, engineers, natural scientists and human scientists). It is urgent because artificial intelligence gains traction in the context of the global systemic crisis announced in 1972 by Meadows.
All human societies, past and present, have had a vested interest in education; and some wits have claimed that teaching (at its best an educational activity) is the second oldest profession. While not all societies channel sufficient resources into support for educational activities and institutions, all at the very least acknowledge their centrality— and for good reasons. For one thing, it is obvious that children are born illiterate and innumerate, and ignorant of the norms and cultural achievements of the community or society into which they have been thrust; but with the help of professional teachers and the dedicated amateurs in their families and immediate environs (and with the aid, too, of educational resources made available through the media and nowadays the internet), within a few years they can read, write, calculate, and act (at least often) in culturally-appropriate ways. Some learn these skills with more facility than others, and so education also serves as a social-sorting mechanism and undoubtedly has enormous impact on the economic fate of the individual. Put more abstractly, at its best education equips individuals with the skills and substantive knowledge that allows them to define and to pursue their own goals, and also allows them to participate in the life of their community as full-fledged, autonomous citizens. But this is to cast matters in very individualistic terms, and it is fruitful also to take a societal perspective, where the picture changes somewhat. It emerges that in pluralistic societies such as the Western democracies there are some groups that do not wholeheartedly support the development of autonomous individuals, for such folk can weaken a group from within by thinking for themselves and challenging communal norms and beliefs; from the point of view of groups whose survival is thus threatened, formal, state-provided education is not necessarily a good thing. But in other ways even these groups depend for their continuing survival on educational processes, as do the larger societies and nation-states of which they are part; for as John Dewey put it in the opening chapter of his classic work Democracy and Education (1916), in its broadest sense education is the means of the " social continuity of life " (Dewey 1916, 3). Dewey pointed out that the " primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group " make education a necessity, for despite this biological inevitability " the life of the group goes on " (Dewey, 3). The great social importance of education is underscored, too, by the fact that when a society is shaken by a crisis, this often is taken as a sign of educational breakdown; education, and educators, become scapegoats.
PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION AND MODERN WORLD
2017
The essay is concerned with the currently central issues of the philosophy of contemporary education in the context of the analysis of global social dynamics and through the lens of modeling the appropriate complex socio- anthropic systems. The essay is focused on the philosophical aspects of education as well as on the conceptual issues with regard to the implementation of the formula of permanent education in modern trans- border hyper-dynamic world.
Educationalisation and its implications for contemporary society
2020
This text presents a few reflections on the processes formatting contemporary conditions for the functioning of individuals in Western society. It proposes a general presentation of the sociocultural syndrome of educationalisation. Learning (education) becomes a tool, a task, an effect (in the form of an attitude of readiness for the constant development of skills), which defines the logic of action of contemporary people. This text should be seen as a contribution to a broader analysis of social processes related to the growing importance of educational institutions in the contemporary world. The first part presents the main features of the syndrome of educationalisation as a process resulting from the expansion of formal education institutions. The author points out here the importance of school education in changing the way of peoples' ways of thinking over the decades and in locating the value of education at the centre of Western culture. The second part of the text presen...