https://doi.org/10.31261/CHOWANNA.2003.20.03
The aim of the article is to present selected contemporary cultural changes and to discuss the implications they (potentially) bring for educational theory and practice. The author is aware that he is describing only one of the “worlds surrounding us,” while omitting others (for example, the world of those young people who embrace a “liberal version of success” and treat life merely as a ladder to climb). The author is therefore conscious of a certain arbitrariness and “partiality” in my narrative and does not claim that it is “true,” “superior to others,” or “final.” However, adopting a different analytical perspective would yield different research results (Melosik, 1996, p. 59). The cultural tendencies described are, from a pedagogical point of view, very important and constitute one of the most significant “challenges” for contemporary educational sciences. It seeks “adequate education,” both in theory and practice—one that exerts a real influence on the younger generation and can serve as a source of social change. In this context, “adequacy” means nothing other than being “sensitive” to the reality surrounding us and its transformations, as well as being open to new proposals regarding the understanding, explanation, and description of the world, and to new ideas. This, in turn, implies a constant readiness to relinquish established habits of thinking and to question one’s own “conceptual schemas.” There is no doubt that the world in which we live at the turn of centuries (and millennia) is entirely different from the one we remember from our childhood. The collapse of the Great Metanarrative of socialism, the introduction of political democracy and the free market, as well as the obvious invasion of Western popular culture and consumerist ideology, have fundamentally altered the socio-cultural conditions to which education and pedagogy (both as theory and practice) should respond. Reality is no longer monolithic and unambiguous; it is becoming heterogeneous and fragmented—full of thousands of “small,” conflicting narratives. It is difficult to navigate and describe, and even more challenging to answer the questions: “How should we be?”, “In what way should we live?”, and “How should we educate?” And yet—as educators—we must tackle these issues because they lie at the very core of pedagogy as both theory and practice.
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Vol. 1 No. 20 (2003)
Published: 2025-08-18
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