The death of George Floyd and the protests that followed in several countries brought renewed attention to racism, its roots and reproduction. Education must be a central plank in our efforts to build a better and fairer future that does not end up in frustration and despair, writes Paul Stanistreet
‘Not everything that is faced can be changed,’
wrote James Baldwin, ‘but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’
Events of the past weeks, stemming from the
tragic death of George Floyd in the United States, have been a catalyst for
reflection on how our societies and the people who live in them can change and challenge
racism.
Anti-racism protests in major cities across the
world have obliged public opinion in various parts of the world to confront
past and present injustice and racism. In the United Kingdom, for example, the
toppling of the statue of a seventeenth-century slave trader in Bristol
prompted national reflection on the legacy
of the country’s involvement in slavery and how this is taught in schools
and understood in wider society. While in Belgium, a statue of King Leopold II in
Antwerp was removed
in acknowledgement of his brutal colonial rule of the Congo. There are calls
for other statues of King Leopold II to be taken down. Continue reading →
Jamal Bin Huwaireb reflects on the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic to lifelong learning in the Arab region
The Arab region, in common with many other
parts of the world,
faces significant challenges in achieving lifelong learning, notably high
levels of illiteracy and education systems damaged by poverty and conflict. The toppling of governments during the ‘Arab Spring’
and conflict between and within
countries have destroyed
education systems in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, while seriously damaging
opportunities for learning
in other Arab countries. The COVID-19 pandemic is now undermining the economic
activity on which individuals, families
and communities depend.
While people are struggling to earn, they cannot use their resources to learn. And, without learning, they are condemned to a life focused on subsistence only, with young people
increasingly exposed to the
temptations of criminal behaviour and terrorism.
Communities and governments seek to provide social
support in the form of health and education, as well as routes
to gainful employment or entrepreneurship
for youths and young adults. Even in wealthy countries, there are challenges in providing sufficient resources for health,
education and employment. The pandemic
is placing yet more strain on budgets
and institutions, and creating additional challenges and demands. Continue reading →
The death of George Floyd has sparked civil rights protests around the world and obliged people to consider questions of race and racism in their respective societies. Here, Joy-Tendai Kangere and Niamh O’Reilly of Ireland’s national adult learning organization, AONTAS, reflect on the role of adult education as a process for anti-racism
Adult, and particularly community,
education is intrinsically linked to social justice movements. As we consider
the potential of education as a practice of freedom that strives for social
change and a more equal society, what is our role in civil society and the
adult learning community at this time? When racial injustices damage the social
contract, sparking mass protests, how can we contribute to anti-racism? We have
a role to play, and as bell hooks, the influential educationalist and feminist
activist states in her 1996 book Killing Rage: Ending Racism, ‘All our
silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity’.
How do we create a society in which we
question dominant racist views, as well as sexist, homophobic and all
‘Othering’ discourses that serve only to dehumanize, a society where everyone listens
and seeks to understand each other, where we strive for solidarity and social
justice? Adult education grapples with these questions and seeks to create
dialogical learning experiences, questioning inequalities, building capacity to
critically think, question, understand, reflect and act. We in adult education
are acutely aware of the power dynamics in the education process between tutor
and learner, and the flattening of such in a community education context,
whereby the lived experience of the learner contributes to the learning process.
As more eloquently described by one learner as ‘bringing us to the course’, it
is more than an acknowledgement of the lived experience; it questions what
knowledge is valued. Continue reading →
While the long-term impact of COVID-19 on education will be dramatic, the future will be much more precarious if we do not focus on building systems for lifelong learning that safeguard quality and inclusiveness, writes Per Magnusson
The COVID-19 pandemic
has unleashed an unprecedented global crisis affecting societies and
communities in a multitude of ways for which few of us were prepared.
Closing
schools has been part of the strategy to mitigate the spread of the novel
coronavirus in almost all countries around the world. With a peak of 1.5
billion children out of school in April, the number is still estimated to be
around 1.2 billion, or 70 per cent of total enrolled learners (13
May). Even if many countries have simultaneously introduced
programmes to allow for continuity of learning and distance learning, in varying
levels of digitalisation, we can be certain this will not compensate for the
learning lost when schools and education institutions are up and running in
‘normal’ times.
The school
closures will undoubtedly have long-term effects for both individuals and
societies. We also know that school closures will have an even more intense
impact for girls, especially from the poorest and most vulnerable groups
because they are the ones most exposed to domestic violence and sexual
harassment, including pregnancies and early marriages. Continue reading →
Sarah Anyang Agbor reflects on the challenges posed by COVID-19 in Africa and asks how lifelong learning can help the continent respond
Lifelong learning has an essential part to
play in shaping the future of our societies. This ambition is reflected in the
African Union’s Agenda 2063 vision of ‘an integrated, prosperous and peaceful
Africa driven by competent citizens able to play in the global arena’. One of the aspirations of Agenda 2063 is to catalyze an education and skills revolution and actively
promote science, technology, research and innovation, with the ultimate aim of
building knowledge, human resources, capabilities and skills for Africa’s
future. By making universal, lifelong access to quality education a reality, it
aims to drive Africa’s economic and technological transformation.
The spread of
COVID-19 across Africa has prompted countries to introduce mitigation measures
such as border closures and social distancing. These interventions are having a
negative impact on already-weak health and education systems, not to mention supply
chains, markets and food systems. The
lockdown has also affected day-to-day social life in African, particularly in rural
areas where means of online communication is limited. Continue reading →
The COVID-19 crisis has made online distance learning the new norm for many. It has also prompted stakeholders to be more creative and agile, in ways that could make open and online learning better and more inclusive, writes Jonghwi Park
Few areas of human life are
untouched by the crisis. From techniques to prevent back pain when working from
home to the
challenges of home schooling, the demand for new knowledge has created an urgent
need for learning, unlearning and relearning to deal with new normalcies. For those
at risk of losing their jobs, reskilling or upskilling is not a choice but a necessity.
Many of us face a steep learning curve in adapting to these new circumstances.
This new learning, while undoubtedly challenging, is, however, critical if we
are to emerge from this crisis into a better future. Continue reading →
As the world marks the defeat of Nazism and the end of the Second World War, Paul Stanistreet asks what lessons we can learn in our current crisis from the mass programmes of social reconstruction that followed the war
The end of
the Second World War was marked around Europe by national programmes of social
and economic reconstruction, as nation states sought both to rebuild and to address
long-standing inequalities.
In France, the
De Gaulle government put in place a massive programme of nationalization and social
reform, granting women the right to vote and laying the foundations of the modern
French welfare state. In the UK, fees for state secondary education were
scrapped (through the 1944 Education Act) and a progressive Labour government
was elected with ambitious plans to transform social security, including
universal free healthcare for all (the National Health Service). Moreover, in the
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), following the period of occupation,
a programme of economic reconstruction ensued, followed by the creation of the
German ‘social state’.
The
solidarity and sense of shared responsibility and sacrifice engendered in the war
appears to have spurred the people who survived these cataclysmic events to reject
the way things had been done before and to demand a world that was better – not
just for a few but for everyone. There was a desire to recognize sacrifice by humanizing
social policy, including in education, and extending people’s rights. Furthermore,
there was a new appreciation of the power of the state to act for the common
good. What is remarkable about this is that it was achieved at a moment when
most of the countries of Europe were in economic disarray, poverty was rife and
food rationing common, and governments were loaded with huge amounts of debt. Continue reading →
The current crisis need not result in a further erosion of social and economic rights and the widening of inequalities – it also represents an opportunity to appeal to global solidarity and rehumanize lifelong learning, writes Maren Elfert
Educators around
the world are alarmed about the consequences of the COVIID-19 crisis. A lively
debate has emerged on what the world might look like in the aftermath of the
crisis in relation to education and more broadly. I would like to add my voice
to those who emphasize that our perspective must be bigger than COVID-19 and
that we should take the crisis as an opportunity to learn from past mistakes
and rethink our approach to education. As a recent article argued in relation
to schools, ‘When the Covid crisis finally ends, schools must never return to
normal’ (Sweeney, 2020), referring to the need to abandon harmful practices such
as deprofessionalizing teachers, excessive testing and the culture of rankings.
This discussion, of course, is related to how we organize our society and how
we deal with the larger environmental, economic, social and political crisis of
which COVID-19 is a symptom.
To paraphrase
Charles Dickens, there is potential in this crisis for the best of times or the
worst of times. The crisis could offer us an opportunity to rethink and
innovate our societies or to move further down the path of dehumanization of
education in terms of ‘one size fits all teaching’ in schools and lifelong
learning as a market commodity. Among the questions and issues that are raised
in the current debates are: In light of the public health and ensuing economic
crisis, will global inequalities in access to
education widen, disrupting progress towards
Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) (UNESCO/IIEP, 2020)? Distance education is being pushed by
corporate interests (Williamson,
2020), but it bears
the risk of further marginalizing disadvantaged students who do not have access
to technology and who depend on teacher-student relationships (Srivastava, 2020; Parramore, 2020). For many students, school represents a place to
socialize and often get the only meal of the day (UNICEF, 2020). Higher education institutions around the world are
preparing for significant drops of international students, and quite a number
of them will probably not survive. Will this lead to a reconsideration of
education as a market model, or just to even more tightened competition? Some
thinkers, such as the Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2020a; 2020b), are concerned about the de-humanization of human
beings as a consequence of ‘social distancing’. Arjun Appadurai, in a recent
keynote panel of UNESCO’s ‘Futures of Education’ initiative, warned of the risk
that education might be considered unimportant in these times of crisis (UNESCO, 2020). This might translate into cuts to education. Continue reading →
As we mark World Book Day, Lisa Krolak highlights the transformative potential of providing incarcerated parents with the opportunity to practice literacy skills while bonding with their children
What better way to engage a non-reading, hard-nut prisoner who lacks parenting skills and has lost contact with his kids than getting him to read Cinderella? Sharon Berry, Storybook Dads
Many prisoners are
also parents, meaning that countless children worldwide are growing up with the
stigma and trauma of a parent behind bars. For children forced into isolation
at home by the COVID-19 pandemic, this absence can feel even more acute. Imprisoned
parents also struggle with separation, particularly as they are currently not
allowed to see their families in most countries. Not being able to stay in
touch with their children and families can have a very negative effect on their
mental health.
Programmes are needed that provide opportunities
for incarcerated parents to maintain strong family connections,
enabling them to play an active role in the education, learning and development
of their children. Often, such programmes offer crucial learning support to
prisoners, who are more likely than the rest of society to have had limited educational
experience, and to have difficulties with reading and writing. Continue reading →
Educational interventions to address the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic need to acknowledge the realities of life in the most disadvantaged communities if they are not to exacerbate existing inequalities, argues Rakhat Zholdoshalieva
The magnitude of the global health
crisis, and the long-term impact it is likely to have on the economy, society
and education, was unimaginable just a few weeks ago. Such crises spark
understandable fear and anxiety, as we come to terms with the impact both on our
physical and psychological health and on our economic, financial, environmental
and social life in the months and years to come.
As someone who works in adult learning,
with a focus on youth and adult literacy and people who experience multiple
forms of discrimination and disadvantage, I observe that many of our evolving solutions,
advice, lessons and reflections ignore the reality of life for many children,
youth, adults, families, communities and regions around the world. In times of massive
disruption, disorientation and anxiety at global level, it is more important than
ever that we do not lose sight of those who historically have been out of sight
and out of mind when it comes to policies and actions. Continue reading →