ATTENTION: "discussion paper" to all education movements worldwide!
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The following text is available as a .pdf - ready to be printed and distributed!
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“Discussion Paper”
~ to education movements worldwide ~
Intro:
During an international meeting in Munich [Germany] at the end of November 2009 we, activists from the education movements in Austria, Germany and Spain, got together and wrote the following paper.
We ask local groups across Europe and other parts of the world to discuss this text and give feedback [united4education@riseup.net]. The responses will be published inside the forum of http://emancipating-education-for-all.org and discussed at the Education Congress in Bochum [Germany] at the end of May 2010 together, hopefully, with as many of you as possible. It is essential to create a strong network between the education movements.
Our objective is to kick off discussions on the concept of education and collect as much input from local groups as possible, to try to formulate a statement that reflects the unity and diversity of the struggle for free and emancipatory education.
Vision:
Essential to formulating a vision is to ask ourselves what social role an education system should have within society.
Furthermore an education movement – be it on a local or global level – should define education itself and include its own definition within a social discourse about education.
The following describes our basic concept for free and emancipatory education. We believe, contrary to training, education must be critical. It must be free and accessible to all individuals, aim to empower people to understand and critically reflect the conflicts of interests surrounding them, as well as to reflect one's own individual role within society as a whole and be encouraged to actively shape it. This way education is a means for emancipation.
Training on the other hand is the sole learning of skills to be offered on the labour market.
Free and emancipatory education, which is accessible to all, is a pre-condition for any society considering itself democratic, since critical education is a catalyst for political participation.
The educational system – a “clash of interests”:
We understand the educational system to be a platform for several interests, which partly contradict each other; some being: economic interests, state interests, and institutionalized religious interests.
All of these three organized streams of interests are structurally opposed by the interest to let people decide the direction their own lives should take. This interest, unlike the others, is not organized yet. Emancipation enables people to live self-determined lives. It is up to critical education activists to get organized and strengthen the emancipatory interests within the structures of the existing platforms of interests.
The currently dominating interests - especially those of an economic nature - function globally. Therefore we are convinced that we can be successful in the long run only by networking and uniting in our struggle globally ourselves. We express our solidarity with all those struggling for free and emancipatory education worldwide.
- activists from education movements in Austria, Germany and Spain -
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Hi,
I think it is great that you wrote this discussion paper and it is important that we create an international education movement. I share your vision, which should be self-evident, but apparently is not.
But: I strongly disagree with your interpretation of the "clash of interests". You speak broadly about a clash of economic, state, and institutionalized religious interests. Everyone interprets something into this, but is means nothing. Please be more explicit, so that one
can understand this part. What is true about this part: the learners interest falls short, in my opinion mostly due to an lack of interest/time many learners invest in bettering their education system.
But there is an clash of interests in the following points:
- Money: Who pays for education? Which education should be paid for? How to divide it on different scientific branches? On research and education? On expensive equipment?
- Power: who decides the money questions? who decides which science can grow, in which discipline money is saved? How fast has to be decided, how do we find a broadly accepted solutions, and this within short time? How do we even know what has to be decided? Who developes good solutions? Which group (students, professors, privates, politicians) should decide how much in higher education? In my view and experience, the current decision-finding-process is hardly able to solve the problems the higher education system has. This is, where other problems arise from.
- young professionals: what do they have to learn? Are organized PhD programs needed? Should they only care for their own career and publish as much as possible? Shouldn't they also be a good teacher? How to motivate them to become a good teacher?
- students: What do they want to learn? What do they have to learn? Which skills are needed? What is their motivation to learn? What should be the motivation?
Have fun by creating a great statement.
Malte
Fachschaftsvertreter at LMU Munich
Middle East Technical University
Hello,
First of all I would like to thank you all for taking this important initiative. It is no doubt that education is a core for human beings to excel in life and to help their surroundings prosper.
Said that, the most important question which arises is, what type of education should be provided to get the desired results? In this respect I agree to Mr. Malte that the term 'clash of interest' has a wide meaning and it would be wrong to ignore the base or reasons due to which the present education system was formulated in the first place, be it industrialism, urge for innovation or otherwise.
Once that is discussed, I believe then we should critically assess the current system, its flaws (E.g. lacking creativity, fear of being wrong, unequal distribution of basic education, etc), its purpose to support the powerful capitalist economies, and its successes.
The third step would be to decide upon the education system we wish to see in today's society; the noble vision of emancipation, creativity and cherishing the diversity rather than making it an excuse to fight. This vision will subsequently enable us to create a viable education system which is non-discriminatory, affluent and prosperous for our present as well as the future.
Good Luck,
Kind Regards,
Ajay Pinjani
Political Science and International Relations Dept.