Education

This Thematic Table is a platform for egualitarian and inclusive dialogue and exchange among humanists and like-minded individuals from different cultures and peoples worldwide. Participants are interested in understanding current problems in education, developing common positions, and sharing ongoing expressions and experiences inspired by multiple humanizing proposals. The Table is guided by the insights and agreements forged during previous regional and national Forums (2006, 2007, 2008, 2019).

We recognize that current educational models are in crisis and prove incapable of responding coherently and comprehensively to the challenges and profound needs of human beings in a historical era of general disintegration. Market-driven and productivity-oriented education has proliferated with neoliberal globalization, reproducing its competitive and homogenizing forms in the fields of education and culture. This shapes subjectivities, weakens interpersonal relationships, and imposes anti-humanist behaviors driven by consumerism, individualism, the degradation of other human beings to mere things, and social fragmentation. Despite the astonishing development of digital technologies applied to education, driven by the premise of “technological solutionism”, and the growing presence of Artificial Intelligence, learners are reduced to mere consumers of tech solutions and passive recipients of fake news, stripped of meaning and blocked from their critical and creative capacities. Facing the monopoly of large technology corporations (big techs), we observe profound global inequalities (socioeconomic, ethnic-racial, gender, etc.), which exacerbate disparities in access to education and contribute to the erosion of human rights gained by states and populations, particularly among large populations experiencing poverty and displacement, affected by extreme crises, wars, discrimination, and violence.

We advocate for the urgent adoption of a humanizing paradigm in education, seeing it as a path for the personal and social transformation of our lives and educational practices, conditioned by a global system of accumulation, injustice, and discrimination. We are confident that new times are emerging, as evidenced by countless educational initiatives around the world that center on the evolution of life and the full development of all human capacities. These initiatives emphasize the awakening of deep sensitivity and spirituality, and are guided by a new ethic founded on the principle of treating others as we wish to be treated.

To initiate our exchange, we propose, among others, the following actions:

• Systematic studies related to educational themes and experiences that contribute to the strengthening of a new humanizing educational paradigm.
• Creative dialogue and exchange with other pedagogies and educational paradigms that allow us to approach and converge in the construction of a humanizing education for the nascent humanity.
• Support and dissemination of ongoing processes that feature educational modalities inspired by the New Humanism approach.
• Permanent participation, as an education table, in the World Humanist Forum. Permanent link with the Education-English table and other languages that may join.

Within this shared spirit, we invite networks, movements, educational and social organizations, educators, students, educational communities, Indigenous peoples, women, and youth—with thoughts and initiatives aimed at building a transformative and humanizing education—to come together at this Thematic Table.

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