Colleagues and I are looking into the topic of schools and universities' civic and ethical responsibilities. What are schools and universities' civic and ethical responsibilities in your opinion?
Ensuring graduates have been taught and can practice/develop the social and emotional skills required for good human relationships and teamwork in their respective workplace/profession (and at home) as graduates. Such skills keeps everyone safer.
Carolyn Ruth Hastie many thanks. Any thoughts on fostering students' values? Stay well.
Producing curious, independent, and active individuals. So reverse of the current system.
Jurand Sobiecki many thanks, appreciated - how would you briefly describe the current educational system? Stat well.
I would describe it as a system that makes people accustomed to being passive, to unjustified hierarchy, and nepotism. It starts right away... children with a natural need for exploration and curiosity are put on their butts for 45 minutes with people who usually lack charisma, are not trained well in public speaking or anything useful (because they were educated in the same system), and now they are the authority because the system says so. Kids that are bored and not stimulated by boring people are put on ADHD medication or need to adjust. The system does not provide diverse paths of education, everything is standardized, there is little attention to genetic predispositions. Instead of focusing on boosting cognitive skills in children by stimulating training and tasks, they made to learn by heart things that they will forget anyways because the system does not take into consideration the forgetting curve or any pieces of information pointing out that the system does not work. The Flynn effect is reversed now, people are having a shorter attention span, and their health is getting worse and worse. So they are accustomed to leaders without skills so they choose terrible leaders and leave in fear of stepping in and pointing out nonsense. They are accustomed to being told what to do and what to think. They are accustomed that being nice to authority is more important than having an opinion so nepotism flourishes. That's why we have experts that should never become one because they lack intellectual skills they are just nice to everyone and do what they are told. That's why things like grit are promoted while IQ soon will be a forbidden subject. The system promotes people that are immune to boredom and repetitiveness. Just learn by heart, do what you told, sit still, and obey. Combine a terrible education system with processed food, tons of sugar and estrogens, and social media and you have the recipe for the idiocracy that we live in. It is mindboggling that people are surprised that people are more obese now than ever, younger people fight cancers and autoimmune diseases, and older people complain about younger generations... well, no shit Sherlock...we were raised on McDonald's and glucose syrup, our water is filled with estrogens and pharmaceutical waste, everything is polluted with plastics, we have a disturbed hormonal balance, addictive and dumbing down social media, and our educational system does not prepare us for that at all. There are some positive initiatives like Montesorri education but overall it lacks logic and people who should change it won't because they know that if the educational system would be about producing true intellectuals they would never land on the position they currently hold.
Hello Emiliano, thank you for the presentation of your latest book on global citizenship education. Congratulations! As a teacher of English I try to teach my university students how to address otherness by using appropriate language skills and adopting attitudes aimed at developing relationships based on respect and curiosity. Some examples of the activities set up at Padula university (Italy) are included in my article "Learning how to mediate. If not now, when?" recently published and now accessibile through Research Gate. Bye for now. Cristina Richieri
Cristina Richieri many thanks, this is very interesting and helpful. Glad you enjoyed the book launch event. The book can be ordered here: Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/Conversations-on-Global-Citizenship-Education-Perspectives-on-Research/Bosio/p/book/9780367365448 and Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Global-Citizenship-Education-Perspectives/dp/0367365448 I will write you privately. I look forward to further engaging with you. Stay well.
Schools have the responsibilities to 1.) form the students in their best potentialities, 2.) prepare them as morally responsible persons for whatever career they'll pursue. Universities have the responsibilities to 1.) facilitate the public discourse 2.) ensure democratic dialogue 3.) contribute to the individual and social development. Hence, school and universities are institutions that have moral responsibilities that develop the well-being of each person and society as a whole.
Cristina Richieri I went looking for your article and couldn't find it - sounds really interesting. Emiliano Bosio I've been thinking about your question about how to foster students' values. Firstly, we educators have to be clear about the values inherent in our degree and focus. Our discipline has a clearly articulated set of values - called Midwifery@Griffith Meta-Values which all educators are familiar with. Then the values need to be taught and reinforced; the approach needs to be consistent. The Midwifery@Griffith Meta-Values are taught and woven into/referred to in every course within the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. Finally, the values need to be explicitly incorporated into assessment processes. In our case, students are directed to include references to the Meta-Values in their assignments and the rubrics for marking include them. My PhD work is around teamwork skills and helping students learn to value each person's contribution as part of developing the social and emotional competencies required for effective teamwork. The development of values in this work includes a sense of self-efficacy and respect for others. What's great to see in schools in Australia is an increasing adoption of the need to develop children's social and emotional skills which of course are values laded. Here's the website link to NSW education website on this topic, which may be of interest to you https://www.education.nsw.gov.au/student-wellbeing/whole-school-approach/wellbeing-framework-for-schools/emotional-wellbeing-strategies
Education in all its stages must provide training in civic values and, depending on the corresponding stage and the cognitive development of the students, technical, social and professional skills, abilities and competencies must be developed in the case of universities. The idea of university social responsibility and its relationship with the curriculum is currently being worked on a lot. If one wants to observe the correspondence between the curriculum and what is expected of it, a good starting point is to read the educational public policies and the curriculum designed on this basis.
Beljun Enaya many thanks, you suggest (point 3) ensuring democratic dialogue, how would you operationalize this in the classroom? Stay well.
Carolyn Ruth Hastie many thanks, this is interesting and helpful. Stay well.
Gustavo Eduardo Toledo Lara many thanks --- what is your own perspective based on previous and current experiences? Stay well.
Emiliano Bosio One must take the presumption of equality and freedom - that all have equal intelligence and all voices must be counted regardless of the perspective. The teacher cannot impose anything on the students but may provide things that might interest them. It is not usually the teacher's explanation that the student learns (because the student may just be parroting) but it is the will of the student that enables her/him to learn. Consequently, with the presumption of equality and freedom, a democratic dialogue is possible wherein nobody condemns anyone and anyone's thoughts even if there is a debate/opposing thoughts that may arise. Much more importantly, when a student raises her/his disagreement with the teacher, the latter must recognize it no matter how the teacher thinks the student's thought is nonsensical or whatsoever. However, I still recognize that operating this kind of perspective in a classroom setting is more practical with an adequate and proportional number of students; otherwise, when done in a bigger classroom, say 50 students with one teacher, time will be the challenge when everyone speaks up. Nonetheless, those who are willing will see time as no challenge. (I am not sure if I was able to articulate well my idea. Mostly, I got these thoughts from Jacques Ranciere and Joseph Jacotot; but my first answers above was inspired by Jurgen Habermas.)
Beljun Enaya many thanks, this is an interesting and helpful response, and good to see that you shared thoughts inspired by Jacques Ranciere, Joseph Jacotot and Habermas, stay well.
Dear Emiliano, thanks for a most interesting question. I read some of your published work and found it enlightening.
In my view we have to teach students the most difficult things:
1. Not to be self-absorbed, especially in your own worldview/personal dogma. When I was young that would have been an impossible task for you. Contact with other points of view/races/genders/cultures with a wise facilitator is probably key. I am reminded of the saying: Its not the design of the intervention, but the interior of the intervenor that makes the difference.
2. Not to be too/even exclusively theoretical. If all you have is theory, it is difficult to understand practicalities or incorporate them in your view. Case studies can help to immerse you in the practical world.
3. Not to follow fashion/be swept up with themes of the moment/social media memes and storms or the fleeting concerns of your generation. It helps to focus them on the 'real' world with the 'real-world' problems of global warming, the lot of minorities and the poor, etc. Maybe the short answer is to help them to acquire reading habits that rely more on fact than opinion.
4. As you already know - we should help them to become global citizens.
5. We should not try to infect them with our own hobby horses or the hobby horses of our learning institutions or our sponsors.
On re-reading this it occurred to me that we should take them on a Witgensteinian journey where we regularly discard our previous convictions for 'better' ones - viz. Wittgenstein 1, 2 and 3.
Johan Herholdt many thanks, much appreciated. Thank you also for your very interesting thoughts herewith. We shall connect (just sent you a message). Stay well.
In history responsibility of college and university is to build a critical view of students. But today I see it is missing in the almost teaching and learning theory . This is a crisis of teaching learning at present scenario. I don't what happened in the future.
Schools and universities should feel responsible for an open and respectful way of transferring knowledge in the context of society.
S
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