On 18 January 2023 in the faculty of economics of the University La Sapienza of Rome was held a seminar entitled “A new social contract for education: perspectives reflection issues”.
There Paolo orefice, ReCUI (Network of Italian UNESCO Chairs) spokeman UNESCO transdisciplinary chair on human development and culture of peace, started to speak about the importance of the theme of education in our time of crisis.
El afirma que estamos viviendo una etapa histórica de transición con mucha crisis de sostenibilidad y participación por parte de los expertos. En efecto, esta crisis de la civilización está estrechamente relacionada con el tema del saber. Así que tenemos que encontrar nuevos paradigmas para la civilización planetaria y posibilidades de diálogo entre todos los saberes. En particular, los conocimientos tradicionales y ancestrales tienen una riqueza de expresión y contenidos que pueden aligerar los saberes en crisis. Dado que la UNESCO siempre ha estado presente en los momentos de cambio de civilización, esto debe implementar una revolución de la educación en relación con la tecnología, con la esperanza de poder implementarla en territorio italiano y europeo.
Then Francesco Castelli, rector of University of Brescia and UNESCO chair on training and empowering human resources for health development in resource-limited countries, said that a social contract for education is the fundament of future and it has to be organized in order to create the future we want, with the awareness of our responsibility towards future generations.
In particular the social contract was theorized for the first time by Jacques Rousseau and if we update it at our time, we can say that it is a contract between educational institutions and society, with the idea of education as a public good, which can be reached through the facing of challenges such as:
-Inequalities in access to education, which is not inclusive (mostly in Africa);
-Degree graduation, which is less of 50% in Europe and Italy;
-Lack of inclusive and equitable education, which can be faced giving recognition and credibility to teachers for their high responsibility;
-Digital transition inequality, which can be faced by making it more accessible and by producing a digital literacy, because of the many risks for intellectual and creative freedom;
-Political conflict;
-Pandemic problem, which caused miss of learning against future generations;
-Climate change;
-Lack of funding education;
-Lack of teacher’s training, in the perspective of future generations.
But there are also many solutions like:
-the creation of a social contract grounded in human rights, no discrimination, social justice, respect for life, human dignity, cultural diversity;
-the formation of an ethic of care, reciprocity and solidarity;
-the strengthen of education, seen as a public endeavour and a common good.
Following him Sobhi Tawil, director future of learning and innovation of UNESCO Paris, said that we need to be able to connect challenges that we are all facing, in direction of interdisciplinarity of network, and, in response to the call of the commission for future education, we need to elaborate an idea of social contract as a collective value and of education as a common good, which need to be a rule for all.
The idea of reimagining a future together can be reached on the base of two pieces: “Education in a post covid world”, by the commission of UNESCO in June 2020, which is a reflection and a proposal of public actions and a page statement on transforming education for sustainable society, which explains what transformation exactly means.
But we also need to answer a fundamental question: why reimagine our future now?
We need to reach the survival of humanity in a moment of crisis, which is a consequence of the destruction of our world, visible in the climate change.
There are main problems like: ecological crisis; continue inequalities, because there is the polarization of the society also in social dimension; technology destruction, used to accelerate development which goes beyond our capacity and will probably bring to the destruction of our society through the creation of social instruments like digital citizenship.
The turning point consists in the existential choice to continue with unsustainable actions or to change our actions, so the decision of breakdown or breakthrough.
It’s fundamental to elaborate renewal relationships with each other and with the planet through technology, not with actual methods but with a new social contract for education, which consists in educate to sustainability and relearn interdependency of natural and human places, because the world is changing around us and education need to adapt to it, in order to help the realization of the future we want.
So we need to revisit purposes of education, looking to organizations, relationships, roles and repurposes them in terms of principles like: epistemic justice of knowledge, by establishing what, how, by whom it is produced, and by looking it more critically; right to education, reaffirming and expanding it with other rights of information, privacy, participation; education as a common good, seen as a public endeavour, with cooperation, solidarity, democratic participation.
This is possible through the rethinking of positive aspects and the abandonment of negative aspects of education, that must be done collectively.
Later Massimiliano tarozzi, UNESCO chair on global citizenship education, talked about the vision of future Europe of education, which consists in reimagining the futures of education in the dimension of hope, which is a key concept in education and is crucial in reimagining education as a political virtue.
This can be achieved by overcoming emergencies through repairing injustices generated by gender inequalities; redefining the relationship with the environment; rethinking the use of technologies.
The meeting of these challenges is possible through demands the adoption of cooperation and solidarity pedagogies; suggests a political role of hope in education and in its transformational power.
In addition we need to think of hope as an ontological need.
In particular UNESCO has changed its strategy for a vision of the future proposing anticipatory strategies: purposes a philosophy of the future critical, transformative and oriented toward social justice.
After him Giulia sonetti, member of the center for environmental and sustenaibility research & CHANGE in NOVA University Lisbon, affirmed that transform is not reform but rethinking education. In particular it is crucial to focus on arts. In fact the ecological crisis is an aesthetic crisis of perception of the world. Arts has a sensibility that science has abandoned, which consists in the creation of a space in which imagination is seen as dialogue, a social capacity that brings to empathy. The connection of arts and education consists in the relation of the attempt to make out what it means to be in the world and the attempt to enter into a dialogue with the world: it consists in the attempt to be in the world as subject, reachable through a grown-up way and along with other subjects in plurality and democracy, in which education is a new relational space, which consists in becoming a human subject taking responsibility for the Other’s otherness.
It’s fundamental the transdisciplinarity, with the connection of theory, through a general search of a unity knowledge, and practice, through the inclusion of all stakeholders in participatory problem solving approaches applied to real world problems.
Then Rita Locatelli, UNESCO chair on education for human development and solidarity among peoples, talked about the theory of the social contract, which was initiated in England and France with the purpose of ensure the protection of citizens’ rights and freedom.
This was reinterpreted and reflected in UNESCO “Learning to be” report of 1971 by Edgar Faure, who did the evolution of social contract focusing on security, in which citizens have an active role.
Now in order to identify new strategies for the future education in relation to the crisis of education we need to rethink and reflect, putting emphasis to the political character of education, which is necessary for full development of all individuals, through the theorization of learning society and lifelong education.
So the social contract of XX century needs to be revisited, which it happens in “the futures of education” report.
Between our social contract of XX century and of XXI century there are similarities such as: the principles, on one side a lifelong education and learning society, on the other side the right to education through life and education as a public endeavour and common good; the limits, the unfulfilled critique of the traditional schooling model. There are also differences such as: humanism, individualistic in opposition to planetary; transactional in opposition to relation social contract, which consists in transactional perspective of social contract in terms of an exchange in opposition to aspects of social contract build together; the target audience of the reports, which wants to speak to everyone in opposition to someone specific; the political character of education, in order to democracy which is more explicit in opposition to less explicit.
There is also the need to underline the relevance of concept of education as a common good: so to explicit the political implications resulting from the adoption of a new social contract of education and to identify new models of education governance in increasingly complex systems.
In the end Dario Padovan, UNESCO chair on sustainable development and territory management, said that we need a new social contract for education to face the new transition of the next century, to change our life and rule the future of the world.
The challenging parts are the educational system based on individuality and competition and the problem of how to combinate natural and social contract, in a world based on economy and technology, which can be faced by questioning the crucial elements of our developing country and by unlearning what we have done until now.
He talks about Durkheim, who was against the social contract. In fact the problem of stay together depends by a problematic commitment and contractual organization at the fundament of our society; so he theorized a new contractualism, which consists in people that have to stay together basing on a private contract, that represents an economization of the social contract based on individualism.
This is different from UNESCO’s vision of social contract, which is spontaneous, against an economic vision and employ a precondition of state of nature: the natural right and equal power, so all people can do everything they want and they are free of duties.
But in opposition to the state of nature, the social contract introduces new rules, which is a way we go beyond the state of nature and so it represents a limitation.
In order to conciliate these two aspects, we have to regain the theory of Spinoza, who says to maintain a part of state of nature, so we get the potentiality of the pure force in emotion and feelings (which generates the motor of society and consciousness of people and it represents the humanity rooted in nature) and to add the rational aspect of the social contract. These aspects combined together can shape our habitat and future, in particular through education, which allows people to understand what they can and are able to do, not what they have to do.