Rethinking Education in Light of Global Challenges

"Compulsory education is a powerful tool for instilling a nation's core values, norms and concerns in young people. Cultures are constantly changing and mixing, but at certain times this becomes more obvious, with its content of hopes, threats, and challenges. One thesis in this book is that three parallel phenomena today affect education throughout the world: neoliberalism as hegemonic discourse, cultural and demographic change related to migration, and climate change due to human activities in the era known as the Anthropocene. Three Nordic countries - Denmark, Norway, and Sweden - are focused as examples of how these phenomena works and what can be done to take advantage of new opportunities and counteract problems. A key theme is the opposition between learning for multifaceted insight on one hand, and instrumental learning as a prerequisite for economic competition in a globalized market on the other. How the growing cultural diversity in the Nordic countries relates to different ways to regard learning is crucial, and these texts provide critical reflections on the specifically Nordic management of tensions between globalization, multiculturalism, and neo-nationalism. The concept Bildung is constructively used to describe the necessity for such kind of learning that emphasizes ability to shift between broad outlooks and individual wants and views. The mix of empirical results and philosophical investigations make this book useful for a variety of readers on issues that concern us all." -- Professor Inga Wernersson, University West, Sweden

"Compulsory education is a powerful tool for instilling a nation's core values, norms and concerns in young people. Cultures are constantly changing and mixing, but at certain times this becomes more obvious, with its content of hopes, threats, and challenges. One thesis in this book is that three parallel phenomena today affect education throughout the world: neoliberalism as hegemonic discourse, cultural and demographic change related to migration, and climate change due to human activities in the era known as the Anthropocene. Three Nordic countries – Denmark, Norway, and Sweden – are focused as examples of how these phenomena work and what can be done to take advantage of new opportunities and counteract problems. A key theme is the opposition between learning for multifaceted insight on one hand, and instrumental learning as a prerequisite for economic competition in a globalized market on the other. How the growing cultural diversity in the Nordic countries relates to different ways to regard learning is crucial, and these texts provide critical reflections on the specifically Nordic management of tensions between globalization, multiculturalism, and neo-nationalism. The concept of Bildung is constructively used to describe the necessity for such a kind of learning that emphasizes the ability to shift between broad outlooks and individual wants and views. The mix of empirical results and philosophical investigations makes this book useful for a variety of readers on issues that concern us all." -- Professor Inga Wernersson, University West, Sweden