ABSTRACT

In the earlier parts of this book, I made the following arguments: (1) modern education is under increasing pressure to change; (2) this pressure comes from across the political, cultural, civilizational and gender spectrum; (3) the pressure is strongest when it comes to pushing modern education towards a globalized and technologized version of the future; (4) this globalized and technologized vision takes a particular form which is in accordance with the neoliberal, western and patriarchal vision for the future; and (5) there are numerous alternatives to both modern education and these hegemonic visions of the future. I also argued that all educational visions are based on particular approaches to time, social change, history and the future. To be able to create another future, social groups recreate, reinvent and reconstruct foundational givens of mainstream interpretations of past and history. While mainstream interpretations of the future focus on the technological, alternative positions focus on social or other empirical realities. For example, feminists interpret history in terms of gender relationships, creating a two-phase history, the movement from matrilocal/partnership towards patriarchal/dominator societies. Even if the classification remains the same, it is interpreted in a different light. For example, as Miles argues, historical periods of great progress (for men) have often involved losses and setbacks for women:

If there is any truth in Lenin’s claim that the emancipation of its women offers a fair measurement of the general level of the civilization of any society, then received notions of ‘progressive’ developments like the classical Athenian cultures, the Renaissance, and the French Revolution, in all of which women suffered several reversals, have to undergo a radical revaluation: for, as the American historian Joan Kelly dryly observes, ‘there was no Renaissance for women-at least in the Renaissance’.