The New Significance of Learning

Should education be understood mainly as a practice in its own right, or is it essentially a subordinate affair to be shaped and controlled by a society#xE2;#xAC;"s powers-that-be? What difference does it make if students are chiefly viewed as recipients of a set of skills and knowledge, or as active participants in their own learning?#xE3;#xAC;#xAC; Does education have a responsibility in cultivating humanity#xE2;#xAC;"s maturity, or are its purposes to be effectively matched to the functional requirements of a globalized age?#xE3;#xAC;#xAC;#xE3;#xAC;#xAC; The New Significance of Learningexplores these and other high-stakes questions. It challenges hierarchical and custodial conceptions of education that have been inherited as the #xE2;#xAC;#xDC;natural order#xE2;#xAC;" of things. It discloses a more original and imaginative understanding of educational practice, illustrating this understanding with frequent practical examples. #xE3;#xAC;#xAC; Among the merits highlighted by this approach are: a recognition that education is first and foremost an invitation to join a renewed experience of quest and disclosure; a realisation that taking up and pursuing such an invitation is a basic right, as distinct from a privilege to be bestowed or withheld;#xE3;#xAC;#xAC; an awareness of the decisive importance of specific kinds relationships in practices of teaching and learning; an emphasis on the human qualities as well as the intellectual achievements nourished by dedicated communities of learning; an acknowledgement of partiality #xE2;#xAC;#x1C; of incompleteness and bias #xE2;#xAC;#x1C; in even the best of humankind#xE2;#xAC;"s learning efforts; the emergence of a distinctive ethical orientation for education as a practice in its own right.