O.V. Dolzhenko University and Education: between the past and the present

Abstract: The article attempts to analyze the nature of the crisis in today’s system of education. The author offers several arguments in favor of the thesis, according to which the cultural and civilizational crisis is the reason for the changes in education, as well as a sign for the coming of a new geological era of Anthropocene in the planet’s history. This very thesis means that what we experience is not a regular crisis, which would be followed by further advance ments in education which would elevate it to a new level (the emergence of universities in Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation). It rather is a revolutionary process of fundamental reevaluation of education and its place within modern society, which spans across several decades already. In these conditions the numerous attempts to overcome the existing obstacles on the way to development are doomed to failure because much rides on the layout and characteristics of each single society while maintaining significant risk of an anthropological catastrophe. Thus, in the contemporary period, it’s more pertinent to debate a transition to a new paradigm in the evolution of education, the basis of which consists of social and cultural characteristics of individual societies. During the transformation, education becomes less about inheritance and more about preemptive development of society. Globalization and contemporary global challenges, rapid rates of technological and informational advancement, as well as the increasing scale of information and communication technology use, demands not only conceptual, but fundamental reformation of educational practice — new strategy and tactics, rethinking of the very mission of education, which becomes not only a continuous process, but a complex phenomenon which exists in space, time, culture and society, capable of dynamically adapting to changes of society and environment. The author speaks of a transition to a learning, adaptive society and university, dynamic system of education which absorbs knowledge and changes according to challenges of the era of global crisis and anthropocene. The coming of the anthropocene age implies radical rethinking of the most basic notions about the system of education, as well as reorienting it towards new forms of teaching and upbringing, development of new forms of “smart-education”, as well as interaction between teacher and student. Due to rapid development rates, the individual whose real life is measured against ages of the past, but whose lifestyle drastically changes with age as well as environment’s transformations, became the main subject of education. This is the exact reason that traditional notions of the nature and specifics of the teacher’s and the student’s work require a revision. A transition towards a new theory and philosophy of education seems imminent.

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