UNESCO’s "Faure report" – 50 years on

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the report "Learning to be: The world of education today and tomorrow", otherwise known as the "Faure report". The Faure report emerged from the International Commission for the Development of Education, established in 1970, and charged by UNESCO’s General Conference with the task of producing a report on the future of education. The report was a contribution to the 2nd United Nations Development Decade and an attempt to (re-)assert UNESCO’s authority at a time when other international organisations, such as the World Bank and the UNDP, were challenging UNESCO’s role as the lead agency for education (Elfert, 2018). Inspired by a humanistic approach to education indebted to the Enlightenment, the report recommended “lifelong education” as the global “master concept” for education and put forth the vision of the “learning society”. While unknown to the general public, the Faure report has captured the imagination of educational scholars until this day. Field (2001, p. 6) saw the report as a “turning point,” as it marked a shift from the emphasis on schooling to a broader perspective including less traditional pillars of education such as non-formal and informal education. Biesta (2011) emphasized that the Faure Report “presents us with a vision of lifelong learning in which democratization is the main driver” (p. 64), and Jarvis (2014) called the report “almost certainly the most influential book on the education of adults in its period” (p. 49). Praised as the “humanist educational manifesto of the twentieth century” (Torres, 2013, p. 15), it arguably represents the fullest expression of UNESCO’s humanistic and utopian vision of lifelong learning (Elfert, 2018).

With its thematic focus on idealism, the CIES 2022 offers a suitable opportunity to revisit the Faure report on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. There are two other good reasons to do so. First, despite its shortcomings, some of which will be discussed by this panel, it was in many ways a progressive document that contains some ideas that are remarkably relevant in our contemporary times. It was written in a time of crisis, after student uprisings in 1968 in France and a number of other countries brought to the fore the deep divide between traditional society and the demands of the younger generation. It was inspired by non-conformist thinkers such as Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, and Everett Reimer whose ideas continue to resonate to this day. It reflected the existentialist fears of the limits to growth and the environmental risks of economic development prevalent in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although the report was based on an Enlightenment view of human beings as shapers of their own destiny (the authors of the report used the concept of the “complete man” (sic!)), the theme of the tension between instrumental rationality and human freedom addressed in existentialist philosophy and literature at the time, was strongly present in the Faure report. Second, there are several contemporary developments that warrant renewed attention to the Faure report: UNESCO’s Futures of Education Commission, which will launch its report in November 2021, and which builds on the Faure report and its successor, the Delors report (Sobe, 2019); the re-emergence of the concept of lifelong learning in SDG 4; concerns about the shortcomings of global governance of education and the education for development agenda in the era of the SDGs (Unterhalter, 2019); and debates about the role of education in a political and intellectual climate characterized by a sense of crisis and a “post-modern” loss of faith in what constituted the pillars of modernity, such as the belief in science and technology and education as major drivers of social and economic development.

This panel will feature papers by scholars who have engaged with the idealistic and universalist message of the Faure report from different perspectives; the first contribution discusses the “cruel optimism” (Berlant, 2011) of techno-solutionist education utopias in South Africa; the second critically examines the impact of the exceptionalism and anthropocentrism reflected in the Faure report. The authors of the third paper shine the spotlight on the Cold War context, in which the Faure report was situated, and argue that the model of lifelong learning it put forward mostly reflected the capitalist world’s challenges and conflicts, neglecting the lessons that could have been learned from the USSR’s lifelong education system at the time.The panel consists of three 15 mins. presentations, which will be introduced by the chair (10 mins.) and followed by the discussant (15 mins.), leaving 15-20 minutes for questions and discussions with the audience.

Sub Unit

• Globalization & Education SIG

Chair

• Maren Elfert, King's College London

Individual Presentations

• Lifelong learning as cruel optimism: Considering the discourses of lifelong learning and techno-solutionism in South African education - Sara Black, King's College London

• Unlearning to become: After Faure’s Universal Man - Suzanne Smythe, Simon Fraser University

• The Faure Report and the Western and Soviet Concepts of Lifelong Education - Jude Walker, University of British Columbia; Elena Ignatovich, University of British Columbia

Discussant

• Alexandra Draxler, NORRAG