SEVEN COMPLEX LESSONS IN EDUCATION FOR THE FUTURE

By Edgar Morin
UNESCO, ISBN 92-3-103778-1, 2001

Available online - Free until 31/10/01 - as PDF file [95p.] at: http://upo.unesco.org/x_pdf/3103778bk1.pdf

UNESCO has invited Edgar Morin, Director Emeritus of research at the CNRS, President for the European Cultural Agency, to elaborate on his ideas for an education of the future, based on the 'reform of thought' that he believes to be an urgent necessity. Edgar Morin, who has devoted a large part of his extensive work to the question of pertinent knowledge, describes this text as 'a synthesis of the full range of my thought on education'.
"......When we look to the future we confront many uncertainties about the world our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren,will live in. But we can be certain of at least one thing: if we want this earth to provide for the needs of its inhabitants, human society must undergo a transformation. The world of tomorrow must be fundamentally different from the world we know as we step into the twenty-first century and the new millennium. We must strive to build a ‘sustainable future’.

Democracy, equity, social justice, peace and harmony with our natural environment should be the watchwords of this world to come. We must make sure to place the notion of ‘durability’ at the base of our way of living, of governing our nations and communities, of interacting on a global scale. ..."

Content:

Chapter 1. Detecting error and illusion
The Achilles's heel of knowledge/ Mental errors/ Intellectual errors / Errors of reason / Blinding paradigms / Imprinting and normatization / Noology: possession / The unexpected / Uncertain knowledge

Chapter 2. Principles of pertinent knowledge
Pertinence in knowledge / The context / The global (relation between the whole and parts) / The multidimensional /
The complex / General intelligence / Antinomy / The essential problems / Disjunction and closed specialization / Reduction and disjunction / False rationality

Chapter 3. Teaching the human condition
Rooted - uprooted humanity / The cosmic condition / The physical condition / The earthly condition /The human condition / The human in humans/ Uniduality,/ The brain - mind - culture loop / The reason - emotion - impulse loop / The individual - society - species loop / Unitas multiplex: human unity and diversity / The individual level / The social level / Cultural diversity and individual plurality / Sapiens - demens / Homo complexus

Chapter 4. Earth identity
The planetary era / The twentieth-century legacy / The legacy of death / Death of modernity / Hope / Earth identity, earth awareness

Chapter 5. Confronting uncertainties
Historical uncertainty / Creative, destructive history / An uncertain world / Confronting uncertainties / Uncertainty of reality / Uncertainty of knowledge / Uncertainties and the ecology of action / Long-term unpredictability / Wager and strategy

Chapter 6. Understanding each other
Two types of understanding / Teaching obstacles to understanding / Egocentrism / Ethnocentrism and sociocentrism / The reductive mind / Ethics of understanding / 'Thorough thinking' / Introspection /Awareness of human complexity / Subjective (sympathetic) open-heartedness to others / Tolerance interiorized / Planetary undertanding, ethics and culture

Chapter 7. Ethics for the human genre
The individual - society loop: teching democracy / Democracy and complexity / The democratic dialogic / The future of democracy / Teaching earth citizenship: the individual - species loop / Humanity as a planetary fatereal....."