Education for ever changing times: the on-going quest for the best solutions in a post-modern world

Abstract

Whatever the challenges our societies are faced with, whatever the innovations we envision, education is deemed the necessary condition for a sustainable solution. In fact, it is thanks to the written language, the development of printing techniques, the means of (collective) learning and its didactics, that is, the art and science of learning and teaching, that we as homo sapiens could unfold the powerful effect – for better and for worse – of dominating and subjugating our planet (Walsh 2019). It remains, at the same time, the paradox of education, its evolving approaches, or the lack thereof, that we find ourselves surrounded by the most remarkable achievements (which becomes apparent in a general increase of the human development index since 1990, technical breakthroughs and industrial revolutions), and most frightening challenge at the same time (e.g. human induced climate change, persistent inequalities, on-going wars, conflicts etc.) (UNDP 2023; UN 2023; HAI 2023). If we agree to live in the Anthropocene, the age in which humans have become one of the most important factors influencing biological, geological, and atmospheric processes on Earth (Tietz 2016), this is also a direct consequence of our divers social-educational processes and practices. Indeed, the directions, approaches, and effects of our educational efforts have an immediate impact on our twenty first century realities and will continue to do so. It is through, by and within education that the further course and development of our collective history and shared global environment will be decided. In short, a lot, if not all, stands and falls with our education. Following a euro-centric, science-based, and humanistic approach, the goal of education is not only the individual emergence from immaturity (Kant 1784) but also the creation of social capacities for democratic decision-making processes that guarantee the integrity of said decisions and resulting actions. To equip citizens in their various roles as entrepreneurs, employees, scientists, and stakeholders of all sorts with the respective fundamentals, the mission of e.g. primary, secondary, and vocational education is ambitious. That is in particular true for democratic societies, where the responsibility for the collective social, ecological and economic well-being ultimately rests with its citizens. Individuals are to adequately be prepared for life in present and future societies and to be enabled to participate actively and responsibly within cultural, social, political, professional, and economic spheres (KMK 2016). The field of education, no matter the context, is influenced by an immense number of different actors, scattered through most diverse spheres, inspired, and constrained by at times incompatible epistemologies. And that’s not the end of it: beyond the ideal sketched above, all educational measures are subject to various interests from different groups inspired by oftentimes conflicting goals, e.g. supporting individual development while maintaining prosperity by ‘producing’ adequately equipped human resources for the