TY - JOUR
T1 - Reclaiming a future that has not yet been
T2 - The Faure report, UNESCO’s humanism and the need for the emancipation of education
AU - Biesta, Gert
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
PY - 2021/10/12
Y1 - 2021/10/12
N2 - Fifty years after UNESCO’s publication of Learning to be: The world of education today and tomorrow, the author of this article provides an assessment of this seminal report, commonly known as “the Faure report”. He characterises the educational vision of the report as humanistic and democratic and highlights its emphasis on the need for educational provision throughout the life-course. He demonstrates how the right to education has, over time, been transformed into a duty to learn, Moreover, this duty has been strongly tied to economic purposes, particularly the individual’s duty to remain employable in a fast-changing labour market. Rather than suggesting that Edgar Faure and his International Commission on the Development of Education set a particular agenda for education that has, over time, been replaced by an altogether different agenda, the author suggests a reading of the report which understands it as making a case for a particular relationship between education and society, namely one in which the integrity of education itself is acknowledged and education is not reduced to a mere instrument for delivering particular agendas. Looking back at the report five decades later, he argues that it provides a strong argument for the emancipation of education itself, and that this argument is still needed in the world of today.
AB - Fifty years after UNESCO’s publication of Learning to be: The world of education today and tomorrow, the author of this article provides an assessment of this seminal report, commonly known as “the Faure report”. He characterises the educational vision of the report as humanistic and democratic and highlights its emphasis on the need for educational provision throughout the life-course. He demonstrates how the right to education has, over time, been transformed into a duty to learn, Moreover, this duty has been strongly tied to economic purposes, particularly the individual’s duty to remain employable in a fast-changing labour market. Rather than suggesting that Edgar Faure and his International Commission on the Development of Education set a particular agenda for education that has, over time, been replaced by an altogether different agenda, the author suggests a reading of the report which understands it as making a case for a particular relationship between education and society, namely one in which the integrity of education itself is acknowledged and education is not reduced to a mere instrument for delivering particular agendas. Looking back at the report five decades later, he argues that it provides a strong argument for the emancipation of education itself, and that this argument is still needed in the world of today.
KW - emancipation
KW - Faure report
KW - humanism
KW - learning society
KW - permanent education
KW - technicism
KW - UNESCO
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85116984024&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11159-021-09921-x
DO - 10.1007/s11159-021-09921-x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85116984024
JO - International Review of Education
JF - International Review of Education
SN - 0020-8566
ER -