International Review of Education: “The Faure report – 50 years on”
The latest special issue of UNESCO’S International Review of Education – Journal of Lifelong Learning (Volume 68, Issue 5, October 2022) is titled “The Faure Report – 50 Years On,” a collection of articles edited by Maren Elfert and Alexandra Draxler.
First published in 1972, the Faure report, titled “Learning to be: The world of education today and tomorrow,” was commissioned by UNESCO against the background of powerful demands of student uprisings all over the world, including in newly-independent countries of Africa. It articulated and reinforced elements of UNESCO’s humanistic approach to education by placing a strong emphasis on lifelong learning and broadening the definition of education to include non-formal and informal education. It also explored potential impacts of technological and environmental change on education needs and practices.
For this special issue, Elfert and Draxler invited scholars to reflect on the contemporary significance of the Faure report and subsequent UNESCO reports on education, including “Learning: The treasure within” (Delors report, 1996) and “Reimagining our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education” (Futures of Education report, 2021).
The 8 articles forming the Special Issue are:
- The Faure report: 50 years on – Editorial introduction, Maren Elfert & Alexandra Draxler
- Reclaiming a future that has not yet been: The Faure report, UNESCO’s humanism and the need for the emancipation of education, Gert Biesta
- Lifelong learning as cruel optimism: Considering the discourses of lifelong learning and techno-solutionism in South African education, Sara Black
- Revisiting the Faure report: Contemporary legacy and challenged legitimacy, Moosung Lee
- Huxleyan utopia or Huxleyan dystopia? “Scientific humanism”, Faure’s legacy and the ascendancy of neuroliberalism in education, Yoko Mochizuki, Edward Vickers, Audrey Bryan
- Faure’s new social contract fifty years later: Promises and evolutions, Rita Locatelli
- The Faure report and the Western and Soviet concepts of lifelong education, Elena Ignatovich, Judith Walker
- The Faure report, Sylvia Wynter and the undoing of the Man of lifelong learning, Suzanne Smythe
About the editors
Maren Elfert is NORRAG Blog Editor and Senior Lecturer in International Education at King’s College London. She is submissions editor of the International Review of Education and member of the Editorial Board of Comparative Education.
Alexandra Draxler is NORRAG Senior Advisor and an education specialist. She spent many years at UNESCO and was the Executive Secretary of UNESCO’s Delors Commission (1993-1996).