Meaning and significance of education reinterpreted in new societal contexts

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday VI)

Group Submission Type: Refereed Round-Table Session

Proposal

Presenters initiate this refereed round-table session to debate challenges to open and democratic societies in the face of emergent authoritarian movements. Presently, we find ourselves in a world where the “Vital Center” (Political Liberalism, Open Society, Free Markets) is collapsing. However, the Cold War’s end was to have heralded an era of global democracy and a deepening of the “vital center.” The lesson we are painfully, and potentially dangerously, re-learning today is that pluralism is essential in the production of ideas, either social, economic, cultural, or political. Lack of diversity in intellectual production has helped create both the significant inequality we now see in society and the neo-populist reactions it has produced. We are asking to what extent we can consider education to offer an opportunity to respond to the populist challenge through broader social debate around academic freedom and open societies. Supporting efforts for critical inquiry and thinking across all age groups are key to help open societies move out of the current crisis. We must move away from closed societies (and the factors contributing to their rise), whether they be neo-authoritarian or mafia states. In this context, the relationship between education and open society becomes central to the nature of democracy and freedom for great swathes of the population.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Globalization and Education

Chair

• Hugh McLean, Open Society Foundations

Individual Presentations

• Education alone does not support democracy, but the right educational content might - Cosmin Marian, Department of Political Science Babes-Bolyai University, Romania; Jeffrey Sommers, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Visiting Professor, the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga

• Selection in Education as the Wider Context of the Segregation of Roma Pupils in Hungary - Péter Radó, Social Sciences and Pedagogy-Psychology Faculties of Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest

• Marketization and social division in access to public educational services - Daniel Pop, Open Society Foundations