Solutions to all global problems lie in the way we teach students to think. Our classrooms need fewer teachers and more facilitators. Teaching is the best way to learn. Genius can be taught! Slight adjustments to the daily schedule can enhance creativity in all. Knowledge is a blessing and not a curse only when it is tempered by values. The focus of education is moving from ‘learning to know’ to ‘learning to do’ to ‘learning to be’ to ‘learning to live together’. Education is educational only when the outcomes are uncertain, not when it is about securing a preconceived set of outcomes. The system that teaches how to make a living must be balanced with the system that shows how to make a life.

These are the fascinating topics that were explored at the recent three-day event in Dubrovnik by an interdisciplinary group of distinguished academicians and educators organized by World University Consortium (WUC) and World Academy of Art & Science (WAAS) in partnership with Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations & Diplomacy (DHUC), Croatia; Inter-University Centre (IUC), Croatia; Person-Centered Approach Institute (IACP), Italy; and The Mother’s Service Society (MSS), India. The course examined challenging questions regarding the future of global higher education and identified essential qualitative changes needed in the content and pedagogy to evolve a more effective form of future-oriented education. The course was broadcast live online to more than fifty participants from 4 continents.

Education is humanity’s best hope for a better future. It is critical for ensuring universal human rights, promoting democracy, enhancing productivity and protecting the environment. It is also the best instrument for fostering the capabilities of independent thinking, creativity, leadership and individuality so desperately needed to enlighten our economic, political, intellectual and cultural behavior. A review of education today makes evident that there is enormous scope for improving and developing the educational system. The means and potential exist for dramatically enhancing humanity’s individual and collective performance in virtually all spheres of our social existence by realistic, achievable improvements in education. ‘Future Education’, a post-graduate certificate course organized by WAAS and WUC, sought to explore fundamental issues in teaching and learning, and the means for ushering in a new paradigm in education.

Global demand for tertiary education is forecast to rise to include over 100 million students over the next 15 years. That is equivalent to founding 4 new universities with 40,000 students each every week, over the next 15 years, as pointed out by Heitor Gurgulino de Souza, President, WUC. Ivo Šlaus, Director, WUC and Dean, DHUC, focused on the need for urgent radical change in the content and pedagogy of higher education.

Garry Jacobs, Chair of Board and CEO, WUC and Vice-President, The Mother’s Service Society, pointed out the triple time warp in education. Many of today’s instructors are teaching a generation after they acquired knowledge. They were educated by instructors who were themselves educated in an earlier generation. Whereas today, content of knowledge is changing so rapidly that what is taught today may be obsolete in a few years!

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

WAAS and WUC recognize the need for fundamental change at the conceptual level. The Future Education course initiated a comprehensive discussion of the subject, and charted the qualitative dimension of the change needed in education, in order to meet the needs of the 21st century. The course involved 16 faculty members drawn from the fields of education and educational policy making from organizations in Europe, America and Asia. In addition to the lecturers, panelists Erich Hoedl, Vice-President, European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Goran Bandov, Vice Dean, DHUC, Olga Melykh, President of the Association “Young Generation will Change Ukraine”, Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Foundation, Ukraine, and students and online participants added to the richness of the discussion.

There was a consensus view at the end of the course that a new paradigm in education is required, one that is idea-based, contextual, life-centric, value-based, person-centered, creative, multi-paradigmatic and trans-disciplinary. The real challenge for WAAS and WUC is to translate this idea into a working model of reality. The course concluded by drawing up a plan of action.

WUC welcomed to its fold all individuals and associations that are concerned about future education, and invited teacher groups, school movements, university networks, student unions, education technology companies, online education providers and corporates to work collaboratively with it.

The Future Education course is the fourth in a series of courses, and will be followed by more courses and conferences organized by WAAS and WUC to promote intense discussion of the critical changes needed in the global system for higher education, and thereby impact social thought, and political decision making. Details of the lectures and links to the video recordings of the course can be found in the following pages of this newsletter.

Educating for the Future

Many calls for education to transform itself are driven by claims about the future that education needs to adapt to/ prepare itself for/ shape. The relationship between education and the future tends to take four forms—rhetorical (where the future is invoked as a rationale for making a change the speaker wants to make any way); optimising (where the future is assumed to be known and where education is understood as a means of preparing for that known future); colonising (where the future is seen as an unknown land that has to be shaped according to the values of the speaker); contingent (where the future is seen as a site of risks and dangers, and where education is understood as a means of protection against such risks).

In all of these instances, education is seen as serving another purpose rather than being a process that has value in and of itself. Such an instrumental view of education as the servant of the future is problematic. The optimisation perspective assumes a foresight of the future that is not achievable; the colonisation perspective assumes the right of the present to stake a claim on the future; the contingency perspective assumes that it is education rather than a wider range of social forces, that will achieve the desired defense against future risks. These perspectives also ignore the fact that education itself is an uncertain process; its results cannot be guaranteed, if they are, the process is no longer educational, it is indoctrination.

Another view of the relationship between education and the future is necessary, one that recognises both the limits of our knowledge of the future and the distinctive temporality of education as a time

in and of itself. Instead, we can consider education as precisely that moment when we are invited as students to put the relationship between past, present and future into play, when we are encouraged to explore how ideas of the future act in the present to reshape and reframe our relationships with today and with tradition. Rather than demanding that education reframe itself to adapt to particular visions of the future, the challenge is to create an educational practice that enables students and teachers together to explore and open up the possibilities of the present.

Education is a time at the boundary between past and future, in which the responsibility of the educator is to create the conditions in which different possibilities emerge and are made real out of the materials of tradition and the ideas of the future. Seen in this way—a new paradigm of Higher Education therefore requires a recognition of the educational movement as profoundly creative and generative—it is in service to no futures and in debt to no past, rather it suspends inherited relationships and opens up new ways of configuring reality in the present.

Keri Facer
Professor, Educational & Social Futures,
Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol

WAAS & WUC at World Resources Forum Davos 2015

The transformation of global higher education is an urgent necessity for coping with the multidimensional challenges confronting humanity today—economic, social, political, cultural and ecological. At the invitation of World Resources Forum, WUC organized a special workshop, “Transformative Future Education,” at Davos on October 14, 2015 at the WRF biennial conference in Switzerland. With more than 600 participants from 108 countries, the overall theme of the Davos conference was “Boosting Resource Productivity by Adopting the Circular Economy”.

The workshop identified a spectrum of pressing needs for transformation of education in our fast changing world of complex and interrelated crises. To address efficiently the multifaceted crisis, we need comprehensive, contextual and competence-based transdisciplinary education for societal transformation. For such a transdisciplinary vision of education for the future, deep drivers of our worldview need to be examined.

At a more fundamental level, education needs to be transformed by cultivating and applying methods to foster independent, creative, deep thinking. The essence of deep thinking is the capacity to move beyond the confines of the present conceptual framework which limits our awareness of available choices. Deep thinking embraces apparent contradictions between opposing points of view and between theory and practice and leverages the tension between them to reconcile and integrate them within a wider conceptual framework. Deep thinking is not the exclusive province of genius. It lies at the root of all learning and can be taught from an early age. The capacity for deep thinking is the essential requirement for transition to a new paradigm of human development.

The workshop was attended by an international group of the forum participants consisting of policy makers, sustainability experts, entrepreneurs, academics, and students. Detailed description of the workshop along with presentations can be found here.

Recognizing education as the key technology for transition to a more sustainable future, Victoria Thoresen, UNESCO Chair for Education about Sustainable Lifestyles, highlighted connectivity and cohesion, transference and transmutation, and finiteness as core principles upon which progress toward sustainability can be based. Thoresen pointed out the shared affinities between UNESCO programming and that of WAAS and WUC and expressed keen interest in partnering with our organizations.

Mila Popovich represented WUC and WAAS at Davos with a plenary speech on “The Art of Sustainability” in the panel “Sustainable Lifestyles and Education” and in a short presentation on our New Economic Theory Project (NET) at the special meeting of the Factor 10/X Club in Davos, which ran parallelly with the Forum on October 11. Factor X is an international club focused on increasing resource efficiency as a core element of sustainable, future-proof development. The NET presentation was enthusiastically received by the club and the topic of the new economic theory was accepted as part of the club’s future agenda. WRF also agreed to become a partnering institution in the WUC-WAAS Project.

Mila Popovich
Chair, Membership Communications Committee,
World Academy of Art & Science

Based on a presentation made at the World Resources Forum

A new paradigm in human development is urgently needed to address the multidimensional challenges confronting humanity today. As a principal driver of social evolution, that will require a new paradigm in education as well. Education needs a paradigm shift from emphasis on assimilation of information to development of creative thinking, from information to ideas, from compartmentalized and abstract knowledge to contextualized and life-centric knowledge.

But beyond this, we need not only a paradigm shift in education but a paradigm shift in thinking as well. We need to foster among the next generation a greater capacity for creative, synthetic, out-of-the box thinking. In order to think out of the box, we first need to be able to become conscious of the box within which our minds presently function. Only then can we become aware of different boxes or conceptual frameworks, and the method of moving from one framework to another.

Until now we have tended to regard the capacity for creative thinking to be under the sole purview of geniuses and other extraordinary individuals. We are now coming to realize that every human being is born with the capacity for creative thinking, but our analytical educational system quickly teaches us to focus on learning within conceptual frameworks rather than learning how to discover, perceive or move from one to another. During the course of our education, we learn many different conceptual frameworks but we do not learn how they are created or how to think outside them. We never learn the process.

The capacity to move from one conceptual system to another is the key to the evolution of knowledge and a signal characteristic of great discoveries and works of intellectual genius. The shift pioneered by Copernicus from a geo-centric to a helio-centric universe and the one Einstein engineered from a Newtonian mechanistic, clock-work universe to one based on the relativity of space and time are characteristic of the types of paradigm shifts that have occurred in all fields of human thought from time immemorial. Science progresses based on a certain set of concepts, assumptions and perspectives until accumulated evidence makes it increasingly difficult to reconcile theory with contradictory observations and alternative perspectives. The testimony of great scientists confirms that all great scientific discoveries have been the result of intuitive, out-of-the-box, non-linear, non-rational mental processes, which are later validated by the experimental method. It is ironic that we teach young scientists the experimental method but little or nothing about the discovery process itself.

Today humanity confronts major problems arising from our inability to reconcile competing needs and viewpoints—religion and science, culture and globalization, security and nuclear disarmament, human welfare and ecology, increasing employment and sustainable development. In every case, the competing perspectives are based on different concepts of reality. Analytic thinking looks for solutions within a conceptual framework by zeroing in on the details at a deeper level. Most of our scientific education is based on analytical thinking. The characteristic of analysis is to term one fact as true, and another as false. We look for the uniqueness in every fact, and see how it is different and disconnected from the rest.

Another type of thinking is synthetic, where we see the relations and interactions between different elements. Holistic or synthetic thinking tries to broaden the field to include other aspects of reality, the way ecological economics now strives to bring ecological concepts into the field of economy. But neither of these modes of thought is sufficient in itself for true reconciliation.

Truly integrative thinking lies beyond analysis and synthesis. It involves a whole new way of thinking, where we see apparently independent phenomena as aspects of one reality, as part of a greater truth or whole. Analysis teaches us about electricity or magnetism, but integrated thinking led Maxwell to the insight that

the two are both expressions of the same electro-magnetic phenomenon. Similarly, Newton discovered that movement and inertia are two expressions of the same principles governing motion. Einstein unified matter and energy, gravity and acceleration, even space and time as a result of integrated thinking.

The solution lies not in affirming one aspect of reality and rejecting the other, but in holding two or more contradictory perspectives before the mind simultaneously. This act generates an enormous tension for resolution and leads to creative perceptions which the analytic mode of thought is incapable of conceiving. It can lead to perception of a new conceptual framework that accommodates the partial truths of competing perspectives within a wider, more integrated system. Deep thinking is neither analytic, logical nor rational in the common sense of these words. It represents a faculty of mind capable of perceiving higher order relations and is the fundamental element that distinguishes human thinking from that of machine learning.

New conceptual systems reconcile contradictions and convert them into complements. Deep thinking is a term for the mode of thought that promotes transition to wider, more integrated conceptual systems. In his book by that name, mathematician William Byers describes the challenge of evolving new paradigms and the characteristic thinking processes that make it possible. He explains that the intense resistance to ideas generated from a wider framework arises because the existence of an alternative perspective is unknown and unimaginable from within the existing framework.

Although discovery of new conceptual paradigms is normally regarded as the work of geniuses, deep thinking is natural to all human beings. It is the faculty we all exercise to learn new conceptual systems as well as to discover them. We all use this faculty to move from one to another throughout our education. But in the process of moving, we are rarely taught the mental process that makes it possible to identify and move to a new conceptual system.

Creative or Deep thinking will be the theme of an upcoming WUC-WAAS course at Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik in 2016.

Garry Jacobs
Chairman of the Board & CEO, WUC;
Vice-President, The Mother’s Service Society

WUC and WAAS partner with 20 institutions to develop course on New Economic Theory

Rising levels of unemployment, inequality and ecological damage pose severe challenges to the future of humanity. Yet efforts to seriously address these issues have been effectively opposed by vested interests and institutional inertia based on outmoded, conventional economic theories and models. Old ideas block urgently needed action. A concerted effort to synthesize and project the best available alternative thinking can effectively challenge the conventional orthodoxy.

Following a highly successful conferences at University of Brasilia in May 2014 and University of Florida at Gainesville last May, WUC and WAAS have joined hands with 20 partnering institutions from 12 countries on five continents to close the intellectual gap that retards effective action on a broad front of economic and ecological issues. The project team and advisory committees include 48 thinkers, academicians and practitioners from a range of social science disciplines.

The project seeks to gather together the world’s best thinking on alternative economic concepts and integrate them within a transdisciplinary human-centered framework for global sustainable development. The objective is to develop a comprehensive, integrated outline of new economic thinking and project it through a course of video lectures for university classrooms and online delivery.

The goal is to formulate valid theory that

• Maximizes human security, welfare and well-being instead of

• limitless consumption and unregulated economic growth for their own sake;
• Perceives people as the most precious resource and development of all forms of human and social capacities as the most important form of productive capital;
• Ensures employment opportunities and meaningful occupation for all, including both youth and the increasingly healthy and active elderly populations;
• Regulates the global casino of financial speculation that currently destabilizes economies and impoverishes people;
• Manages the world’s resources in a sustainable manner for both present and future generations;
• Promotes a more equitable distribution of income within the constraints imposed by the planet’s resources;
• Resolves the apparent contradiction between human welfare and ecological sustainability by shifting the focus from unlimited, wasteful, material consumption based on energy and material intensive technologies to maximum security, welfare, well-being and developmental opportunities for people.

Conferences exploring alternative perspectives for the project are already being planned for University of Lisbon in May 2016 and Stellenbosch University, South Africa in 2017.

For more information on the rationale of the project and project plan, partners and participating individuals, past conferences and discussion papers, please visit www.neweconomictheory.org

Invitation for Faculty for the

Post-Graduate Certificate Courses at Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Mind, Thinking
& Creativity

April 11-15, 2016

Mind is humanity’s highest developed instrument for seeking knowledge; therefore, it is ironic that we invest so little time in education and scientific endeavor trying to understand the nature of mental knowledge, the character of the mental processes by which we arrive at it, the inherent limits to rationality and mental ways of knowing, as well as the extraordinary creative and intuitive processes by which mind transcends those limitations and tends toward genius. Thinking is the activity by which mind associates, organizes, coordinates and integrates information, thoughts and ideas. Creative thinking is the process by which mind extends the boundaries of existing thought and knowledge to connect, reconcile and unify previously unconnected or contradictory perspectives. This course will explore the characteristics of mental knowledge and thought processes, types of thinking, the character of rational thought, the mental and social construction of knowledge, deep thinking, creativity and genius. Rather than focus on abstract philosophical concepts, it will apply this knowledge to understand both the sources of humanity’s prolific mental creativity, the characteristic problems it confronts due to irresolvable conflicts and contradictions between mental perspectives, and their resolution in different fields of natural and social science, public policy, collective and individual behavior.

LECTURE TOPICS

• Nature of Mind
• Types of thinking
• Conceptual construction of knowledge
• Social construction of knowledge
• Mental creativity & the scientific method
• Objective and Subjective forms of knowing
• Deep thinking and Paradigm change
• Education and development of the mind in children
• Limits to rationality
• Mental patterns associated with genius
• Insight and Intuition

Social Power, Empowerment
& Social Evolution

Oct 31-Nov 4, 2016

Humanity lives in a time of unprecedented capacity for accomplishment in every field of social life. Never before have we possessed power of this magnitude for good or for evil. Never before has power been so widely distributed within society. Democracy, law, human rights, science, technology, education and many other forms of social organization have generated immense power. Society governs the possession and exercise of this power through formal structures and institutions, such as law and human rights, as well as through both legitimate and extra-legal informal mechanisms including status, wealth, popularity, political influence and corruption. The distribution of power in its various forms powerfully impacts on the functioning of the economy, political system, educational, scientific, religious and and other social institutions, and on the overall productivity, strength, integrity, harmony and welfare of society. This transdisciplinary course will explore the sources, expressions, determinants and consequences of the creation, distribution and exercise of social power in its various expressions in politics, economy, society and culture and its consequences for the evolution of society as a whole.

LECTURE TOPICS (partial list)

• Society, social capacity, social power and social potential
• Nature and types of power
• Sources and levers of social power
• Relationship between the distribution of social power,
  social harmony and human welfare
• Formal and informal centers of power in society
• Authorized and unauthorized exercise of power
• Power and human relationships
• Individual empowerment and disempowerment
• Inter-exchangeability between different forms of power
• Power behind the throne
• Characteristics of money as a form of social power
• Nexus of political, financial and social power
• Democracy and Plutocracy
• Strategies for equitable distribution of social power

COURSE DIRECTORS: Garry Jacobs, Chairman & CEO, World University Consortium; Alberto Zucconi, President, Person-Centered Approach Institute, Italy; Winston Nagan, Professor of Law, University of Florida, USA; Goran Bandov, Vice Dean, Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations and Diplomacy, Zagreb, Croatia.

Please send us an email to support@worldacademy.org if you wish to participate as a faculty.

Shaping the future in order to realize the economic and social goals that enable the establishment of a socially inclusive and environmentally healthy community is the fundamental challenge of human society. Technology has been shown to be the key player in meeting this challenge. Still, there remain many uncertainties related to the transformation of scientific results into technology regarding its positive economic potential, and social, and human outcomes. The rapid pace of technological change at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as well as the inability to understand technology and perceive its effects on society is one of the greatest, very subtle, problems of the XXI century.

There are many who, facing the rapid advances in the XXI century, wonder if it will be possible or even desirable to continue along the path of such prodigious change. Technological advances per se do not guarantee above all how they will be used. Tomorrow’s technologies may contain destructive potential, a threat to the natural and human environment which may be too powerful and challenging to control. A purely technological risk involves the possibility of greater vulnerability to system-wide breakdowns. Certainly, the risks of over- or under regulation and of undercapitalization error of new technological developments are already present. Furthermore, enthusiasm about new developments often neglects the social, ethical, economic and political constraints. The complement of that is to overlook the secondary, very harmful, effects of new technologies offered for improving the condition of humankind.

The interrelation of technological and cultural changes is vitally relevant in the globalized era in which we live. Associated with a belief in technological determinism, the convergence theory argues that we are becoming more similar to one another—i.e. the world is converging—since we all make use of the same technologies. The role of technological change in promoting the convergence of societies is less certain on the theoretical and empirical grounds. To think of technological change as a universal instrument that dissolves all prior religious, cultural and social patterns is not possible.

The theory of cultural lag is predicated on the belief that habits, thoughts, values, and social arrangements often fail to change at the same speed as technological innovation. The belief that technology acts as an independent force in our life, unaffected by social forces and inertia in change of spirituality is known as “technological determinism”, and if it is true, we have become the

servants of technology instead of its master.

No one can argue that technology has not been a key force in shaping the world we live in, and in which we will live, but we need to appreciate the fact that technology has not been independent of the society in which it is imbedded. Does social constructivism therefore offer the possibility for more human agency than technological determinism?

The conference aims to open many questions related to the interaction of emerging technologies and society. With this in mind, the prospective participants are invited to contribute to any of the following topics:

• Technology advances: challenges and threats
• Technology and values
• International relations and technology
• Social construction approach & technological advance
• Technology control, legal and ethical constraints, sustainability
• Technology dependence, power and bureaucracy
• Technology, spirituality and religion
• Technology, future education and cultural lag
• Artificial intelligence and future of humans
• Technology and gender

Technical Details
Venue: Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, Podgorica, Montenegro
Date: May 19-20, 2016
Organizer will cover speakers’ costs of stay (local transfer, lodging, meals and social events).

Deadlines
Abstracts (not more than 300 words): 15 January, 2016
Acceptance notification: 1 February, 2016
Full paper: May 15, 2016

Contact: Ms. Katarina Terzic
Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts
Address: Rista Stijovica 5, 81000 Podgorica, Montenegro Tel: +382 20 655 459; Fax: +382 20 655 451
Email: katarinat@canu.ac.me; canu@canu.ac.me

For more information click here.

The purpose of education should be to match the individual attributes, aptitudes and aspirations of students with the needs of global society as properly described in a context or paradigm.

The needs of students and of society as a whole are best described as the hierarchy of needs articulated by Maslow: viz. Physiological, Safety, Love, Esteem and Self-Actualization. Unfortunately, however, education has become a tool in the hands of stakeholders, to create hordes of “voluntary, paid slaves” in subservience to a misguided paradigm. There is not much of a variation from the old days of fiefdoms, landlords and authoritarians who created and controlled the work force by way of “involuntary unpaid slavery” to serve their needs.

The misguided paradigm referred to above, that has driven and motivated the construction of education to create “workers” thus far, is best described, in terms of words like Progress (capitalism, profits, GDP etc.) Democracy, Nation Statism, Scientism, with singular emphasis on “Financial” capital as the sole determinant of success, without regard to other equally important forms of capital such as Human Capital, Social Capital, Cultural Capital, Resource

Capital, Eco-System Capital and Spiritual Capital. The consequences of this misguided approach are ubiquitous.

Going forward, education needs to be urgently reoriented in service to a paradigm that takes into account humans as planetary citizens, balancing the interests of the “collective” with those of the “individual”, as inseparable, interdependent stewards in a system that comprises the Bio-Sphere, the Geo-Sphere, the Atmosphere, the Zoo-Sphere, best described as Gaia.

Nothing less will do. It will serve us well to remember that ninety-nine percent of all that ever lived is extinct and we as humans, contrary to our beliefs, are not exempt.

Sesh Velamoor
Executive Director, Foundation for the Future, USA

Following highly successful conferences at Brazilia in 2014 and Gainesville in 2015, the World Academy of Art & Science and World University Consortium are pleased to collaborate in organizing a three-day conference on Post-2008 Global Dynamics & Structural Changes: Economic, Political and Eco-Societal Transitions at the University of Lisbon on May 11-13, 2016 in association with the Centre for African, Asian and Latin American Studies (CEsA), Research in Social Sciences and Management (CSG), Lisbon School of Economics and Management (ISEG), and University of Brasilia (UnB).

Although the international crisis starting in 2007 managed to generate some skepticism among decision makers, politicians and international organizations, the disturbances it created were apparently not powerful enough to inspire another shared vision of positive paradigm change. We hope the 2016 International

Colloquium will stimulate thought and action on the vision of a sustainable, fair and equitable way to deal with the critical tasks society is facing. We need to examine the root causes of the current challenges and opportunities so as to formulate an integrated and comprehensive strategy towards the promotion of worldwide change to well-being.

The XIII Colloquium will discuss the current international situation and its systemic stresses with special emphasis on Europe and will explore changes in economic theory and policy needed to cope with the challenges of globalization, mechanization, employment, migration and ecology.

Paper submission is open until January 31, 2016.

Click here for more information.

Based on a lecture by Winston Nagan, Director, WUC and Professor of Law, University of Florida, USA during the Future Education Course.

Values are fundamental to decision-making at all levels. Personal, social and ethical values decide the course of action, of individuals, organizations and even nations. WAAS was founded on the quest of eminent thinkers, scientists and artists to affirm universal values and accept responsibility for the impact of their actions on society.

After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American theoretical physicist and ‘father of the atomic bomb’ Richard Oppenheimer became the emblem of a new type of technocratic power. He became a household name and appeared on the covers of Life and Time magazines. But five years later, during the arms race between the US and USSR, Oppenheimer lobbied for international arms control. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb for ethical reasons. With growing concern about the social and ethical responsibility of scientists, Oppenheimer joined Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Joseph Rotblat and other eminent scientists and academics to establish WAAS in 1960.

They believed that education and knowledge without values are destructive. At the root of the multiple crises confronting humanity today is a crisis of values that must be resolved before there can be

any hope of lasting solutions to the problems facing humanity. Values are the quintessence of the knowledge of human accomplishment.

The common element in all instances of progress or accomplishment, in any field, at any level—individual, regional, national or global—is positive values. Just as physical skills are the channels through which physical energy is directed so that it produces results, values determine the path for the expression of our psychological energies. The quality of our values and the intensity of our commitment to them determine the level of our accomplishment.

Civilization is based on knowledge, culture is the source of our values. Pursuit of knowledge divorced from values is a threat to both civilization and culture. When knowledge and values are not aligned with one another, we move towards dystopia. As Einstein suggested, new knowledge should be a blessing and not a curse to human kind. Higher education must sustain high ethical and moral standards of responsibility.

Values were explored in depth in an earlier course, “Individual Accomplishment, Growth & the Character of Life in Management, History, Literature, and Psychology” at IUC, Croatia on August 25-30, 2014. It was the central theme on the symposium organized by WAAS and CERN under the auspices of United Nations Office at Geneva in CERN, on November 11, 2015.

Education is one of the fundamental building blocks of the social construction of reality; it is more and more evident that we need a paradigm change in traditional education in order to enable people to deal effectively with the mounting challenges facing humanity. This retooling needs to start with our frames of reference.

We need to create a new paradigm of education in order to enable education to serve people’s needs and to have relevance in public service, social responsibility, and sustainable governance and development.

Education is one of the main narratives to prepare new generations to be an active and constructive part of society and is one of the main carriers of values. In Person-Centered Education (PCE), also called student- centered education, values are made explicit to facilitate students to have a critical and proactive role, an effective training to become fully functioning members of the Polis. The Person-Centered Approach (PCA), originated by the late Dr. Carl Rogers, is a scientifically validated systemic, holistic approach with applications in all the helping professions: Psychology, Education, Medicine, Social Work, Management etc. The central hypothesis of PCA is that individuals have within themselves vast resources for self-understanding and for changing their self-concepts, basic attitudes and self-directed behavior, and these resources can be tapped if a climate of facilitative psychological conditions is provided.

The purpose of PCE is to protect and promote the person’s innate creative capacities of learning from their experiences, to promote wholeness and integration in the individual by focusing on the student’s personal growth, and the development of creative and competent members of society, able to contribute effectively to the life of their community.

The role of the student-centered teacher is a commitment to effective, democratic and value based education, the capacity to share her/his passion about learning, relating to others with

respect, empathy and congruence. The teacher needs to be a facilitator of learning, an effective mentor promoting student creativity & autonomy, capable of helping students develop their personal and social skills.

The role of the student in learning is to take responsibility for one’s own personal development, interested in the development of social, personal and problem-solving skills, learning to learn, learning from mistakes, willing to contribute to a cooperative and tolerant school ethos and to learn how to relate to herself and others with respect, empathy and congruence.

Research shows that schools, colleges and universities attain higher rates of student retention and better learning with such a student-centred approach. As an example, at the Person-Centered Approach Institute (IACP), post graduate courses are organized as a learning community where professors and students create a facilitative climate of learning and collaboratively strive to achieve common goals. Exams are far from traditional in method: students share their self evaluation with their group and receive their peers’ and professors’ feedback. In addition, each professor and tutor receives feedback from the students. During written exams, questions are distributed for students to answer. At the end of the allotted time the students are asked not to turn in their paper, but to take it home and correct it by consulting the literature, and send it to their professors.

Alberto Zucconi
Secretary General, WUC;
President, Person-Centered Approach Institute, Italy

We organize knowledge into courses and curricula by breaking it into smaller, more manageable parts that we call disciplines and subjects. This results in a divorce between the various categories of knowledge, and a disconnect between knowledge and life. As Marilyn Ferguson, American author and speaker says, our educational institutions “break knowledge and experience into subjects, relentlessly turning wholes into parts, flowers into petals, history into events.” This leaves students unprepared to face the world of work, with its interconnected issues that transcend narrow disciplines.

Any challenge, be it unemployment, climate change, global economy or fundamentalism, can be effectively handled only when it is seen within its context, and not isolated from it. To understand any part, we also need to understand the whole and the relationship of the part to the whole. Education that focuses, in the name of specialization, on a narrow part to the exclusion of all else, is not geared for the dynamic needs of the future. It needs to become contextual.

Contextual education is a method of teaching and learning where information is presented in such a way that students are able to relate to it, and construct meaning based on their own knowledge

and experience. Along with teaching the subject, there is a constant emphasis on establishing relationships—between the subject and all other subjects, between the information and the circumstances in which it was generated, between the lesson and the learner, and between knowledge and life. For example, take the European refugee crisis. Clearly, we need to know the history, geography, politics, economics, religion and culture of the peoples in order to understand it, and effectively address it.

An organized, collective effort to add the context to the information imparted, to see the part in the context of the whole must be integral to education of the future.

Janani Ramanathan
Senior Research Analyst, The Mother’s Service Society

Pioneers in Education: Transformative Potential of Online education

Prof. Kari Frisch works at Central Lakes College (CLC) in Brainerd, Minnesota. She teaches online classes on Interpersonal Communication, Intercultural Communication, Mass Communication and Online Social Networking. She has consistent retention rates of around 95 percent in her online courses.

The low attrition rates in her courses are a result of a combination of different tactics and practices in course design and delivery. All students in her classes take a learning style assessment at the beginning to become aware of what their personal learning styles might be, and are given resources for how to best use their dominant styles for deeper learning in all their classes.

Some examples might be a musical playlist assignment for those musical learners, an interview assignment for those high in interpersonal skills, a meditation assignment for those intrapersonal learners, a quiz on some statistical charts for number folks, and a word puzzle for those high in linguistic learning.

The “Windows & Mirrors Theory” is used, which helps students connect to material in more personal ways because it’s based on their own experience and knowledge versus something deemed

“right” or “wrong.” The basic foundation of the theory is that one can look at something (a poem, an experience, a picture, a concept) and look for ways in which one recognizes one’s own experience/knowledge. Those similarities are considered “mirrors”. Then one looks at the same item, for differences or what’s unfamiliar and those become “windows”. When those windows and mirrors are shared with each other it becomes clear that what may be a window to one person is a mirror to another.

Students are trained in Westernized education to be thinking there’s one right answer, so to allow them to have this “well it depends on you and your life experiences” is really rewarding. When we can connect more personally to material, we get deeper, more long-term, learning.

Online education has the potential to be transformative, especially bringing together students and instructors who may not otherwise be able to attend class in the same traditional classroom. We are in a global world now where understanding different perspectives is important both personally and professionally. Giving students the opportunity to have life experiences online they might not otherwise have inside their own neighborhood is rich in potential.

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What Neurobiology and clinical Psychology can tell us about learning, creativity, performance and problem-solving

Based on a lecture by Stefan Brunnhuber, Medical Director & Chief Medical Officer, Diakonie Hospital, Germany, and Vice-Chairman, European Institute of Health during the Future Education Course.

Teachers have known it all along. One learns best, not when one studies the subject, conducts experiments or research, but when one teaches it! Currently, most higher education curricula do not tap into the full potentials of our brain and our mind in order to get the best out of each program.

There is empirical evidence that suggests that personal and interpersonal variables outperform institutional factors. A meta-analysis covering 50,000 studies involving 80 million students between 2009-2012 to answer the question what improves the learning curve in students found that factors that work positively are peer tutoring, cooperative peer learning, feedback, teacher training and the relation between teacher and student. Inter-personal variables were found to be more important than institutional variables by a factor of 2.

Active learning dramatically improves learning outcomes. The average learning retention rate from listening to lectures is 5%. Reading raises retention to about 10%. Audio-visual content, demonstration and group discussion raise it further to about 50%. Practicing by doing ensures a 75% retention rate. But the highest retention rates of 90% are achieved when the student teaches the subject to others. Teaching others is an effective method to improve social competence. Teaching others helps reduce student

competitiveness. Neuroscience shows us ways in which we can unleash this capacity to its maximum, regardless ofthe field of study involved. Exercise has a strong positive impact on cognitive enhancement. Introducing a brief high intensive exercise in class daily sees a significant increase in attention span, mathematical skills and overall performance. Mindfulness increases creativity and performance while taking care of the information overload that we are subjected to. Sleep is essential for memory consolidation, and physical and mental performance. A balanced, healthy diet boosts creativity & performance better nutritional supplements.

Creativity is happening in each of us. The purpose of education is not to create financial wealth, it is an ongoing process of being creative, becoming creative, and encouraging creativity. We do not need more new disciplines, we need a creativity response. If learning is the change of behaviour through experience, we need a lot of creativity to make that happen.

Based on lectures by Zlatko Lagumdžija, Former Prime Minister & Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia & Herzegovina; Professor of Competitiveness and Information Technology, University of Sarajevo & Tibor Tóth, Ambassador, Former Executive Secretary, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization PC during the Future Education Course

Values are a common theme and key issue in leadership and education. We see a society that is increasingly segregated. The tendency for cultural segregation is severely aggravated by the refugee crisis that Europe faces today, which threatens the gains of social unity achieved over half a century. It also explains the surprise that the world’s leaders feel when they are faced with this crisis. It shows the complete disconnect and ignorance of the underlying interconnectedness that prevails in our societies.

Education should be styled in such a way that it helps us move towards a shared society. It needs to shape leaders who are firmly committed to positive values, and see the environment, its challenges and hotspots clearly. It is important that the influence of money, social media and ICT be checked and directed correctly, and issues such as inequality and discrimination addressed for our common good. Our education can and should work towards this.

In spite of the commonality between leadership and education, there is also a great gulf between political leadership and educational systems. The need of politicians is political survival, not the implementation of educational policy backed by research.

Hence, often, though there is clear knowledge of what needs to be done, existing forces in society prevent or impede the execution of

the knowledge from a hundred ulterior motives. We see in reality that people do not learn lessons, they refer to outdated reference manuals to address today’s issues, sometimes do not follow up on their own decisions, and then when things get worse, they wonder why. Challenges are getting increasingly complex. Earlier, they could be compared to a jigsaw puzzle. We had a picture, we had the pieces, and we put the pieces together just as in the picture. But today, as we try to put the pieces together, the puzzle pieces are changing and the big picture is changing too.

We urgently need to find a way to live as a shared society globally and locally, in order to survive, and a university incubator can sow seeds of the solution. Holistic value-based education that motivates, mobilizes and moves people, one that encourages rational thinking and appeals to the emotions, is needed to create effective leaders who can steer us into the future.

Leadership was the exclusive focus of an earlier WAAS-WUC course “Essence of Effective Leadership” held at IUC, Croatia on March 31-April 3, 2015.

In the Age of “Learning to Be and Learning to Live Together”

As we move into the new era of holistic interdependence and inter-connectedness, the educational paradigm primarily based on “learning to be” and “learning to live together” is needed. Noticing the drastically different characteristics of educational goals of these newly emerging paradigms, from their traditional counterparts of “learning to know” and “learning to do”, successfully managing the transformational model of education will be the most critical challenge for educators of our time.

The educational goal of “learning to be” emphasizes the development of the human potential to its fullest. This concept of Self-Actualization invites the totally different level of substance to be learned in any given learning process; that is Consciousness. Conscious learning processes may include elements such as self-awareness and awareness of others, cultural empathy, inclusivity, globality, principled decision-making, social responsibility, and ecological sustainability.

The educational goal of “learning to live together” is seen as needing to develop an understanding of others, of their history, their tradition, and their spirituality. If the goal of “learning to be” is about being independent, the goal of “learning to live together” is about being interdependent; these two educational goals are interconnected in a sense that only the independent human being can construct an interdependent social and ecological community. Within the goal of “learning to live together”, the substance in the learning process is global citizenship and responsibility.

The emerging educational paradigms will require educators and institutions to go through a transformational process based on three dimensions: people, pedagogy, and educational system.

The transformation needs to start with professors. Their deep reflection upon ultimate mission of education, their corresponding attitude toward education and learning, consciousness in teaching and the value of values will be critical.

For the new paradigm of learning with its highly inter-connected complex system, the pedagogical notion of structuralism will be significant. Topics such as emerging knowledge and experiential learning, trans-disciplinary and holistic system approach, and sense-making exploration which contrast with the traditional hypothesis testing will warrant attention.

The educational system itself should be able to provide an effective platform for a transformational model of the learning process. It will require a strategic organizational change including i) redefining the purpose, vision, and values of the education system, ii) developing and implementing value-congruent teaching, iii) incorporating multi-stakeholder participation, and iv) becoming a community of learning.

As we move into the new era of sustainable development the emerging educational goals of “learning to be” and “learning to live together” warrant genuine attention from educators. Academia therefore remains the pivotal stakeholder in the new era of global collaboration where governments, business organizations, and civil societies’ cooperative networks must be coordinated in the most effective, efficient, and equitable manner, so that it can generate creative and sustainable solutions to the pressing global agenda.

Building conscious and responsible community of learning in academia will be the key to sustainable development in the future.

Stephen Yong-Seung Park
Dean of International Affairs, Professor of Human Resource Management, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea

“Whatever is received is received according to the nature of the recipient”. In this quote, St. Thomas Aquinas highlights the importance of the mind: the recipient of every possible interaction with our environment that determines what we see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Educating the mind is vital to make our belief systems evolve, leading to chosen preference patterns and meaningful actions.

Conscious and Unconscious mind at work: What is our mind? How does it shape our identity? Are you a consequence of your mind or do you know how to master the causes that determine your entire life?

Our mind is responsible for our vast range of emotions but if we do not train it to watch our body sensations and their forthcoming emotions, the consecutive actions will take place without our noticing it. Therefore we could say that the mind is a continuous and mostly unconscious process that determines our actions at every instant, based on external stimulus and reference to past likes/dislikes.

How to change the unconscious pattern? An analogy of the mind is the riverbed and the water. If you wish to change your actions (the water) you have to add a new riverbed (preferences and beliefs) to the current one. To change, you have to create a new riverbed and then sustain the flow of water in the new ones. Meditation, Yoga and other mindfulness-based exercises are designed for that purpose. By focusing our mind on the here and

the now, new riverbeds are created and sustained making changes sustainable.

Some faculties of the mind: Most mothers or twins experience that if their beloved is having pain or intense sadness, they feel it instantly even at great distance. Their mind is receiving information without space or time limit. In 1982 Alain Aspect demonstrated the phenomenon know as quantum entanglement. Accessing a realm of instantaneous information is simply one among so many extraordinary faculties of the mind. Hindu and Buddhist traditions have millennia of advanced practices of mind exploration.

Why and what for are we trained this way? Since early childhood, pupils are sitting in front of teachers. For hours, days and years, obeisance, memorization and repetition are valued instead of self-responsibility and understanding. However in every culture there always have been two systems, two forces: one system is called exoteric and is about exploring and organizing the visible, material world. Another system is called esoteric, interior and is about revealing the inner mysteries of the mind, and solely relies on each of us as individuals. We focused on one system and rejected the other.

How to balance our education? Montessori and Steiner are examples of successful alternatives. They are intended to develop those two systems together balancing inner and outer worlds, left and right brains, art and science etc… Mind education starts with the fundamental golden rule and cultivates 1. right speech and right action 2. right effort and right concentration 3. right understanding and right thinking.

Pierre-Antoine Barraillé
President, Praneo, Switzerland

Future Education Course at IUC, Dubrovnik

New Education System: Demands and Necessities

It’s more than obvious that we need a new higher education system. The world today needs a system that learns from past lessons and turns crises into future opportunities; a system that doesn’t merely ‘train’ youth in the name of education but brings out their fullest potentials so their latent individuality can fully blossom; a system that helps the student realize their full potential; a system that makes cooperation as opposed to competition the norm.

It’s ironic that the current education system largely trains our youth to live in the past while what we need is a steady, organized march towards the future. But to create the future, we must first be ready to let go of the security the past cocoons us in.

Common sense tells us that walking backwards to reach a destination forward will not guarantee accomplishment. Turn the clock back in time and see what you end up with. Complexity and chaos. Chaos and complexity have their origin in humanity trying to create the future while still clinging on to the past. It’s not time that is complex. It’s not knowledge that makes life chaotic. It’s how we deal with time and knowledge that decides the outcome. Complexity and chaos are in the mind, not the external environment.

A common sense approach tells us clearly that going back in time will only create more problems, let alone solve them or create new opportunities. An adult cannot become a toddler. The childlike freshness and energy can be acquired but wanting to ‘change’ into a toddler is a totally different matter. Trying to reverse evolution may give a temporary sense of nostalgic satisfaction, but is dreadful irresponsibility.

Also, while we are desperate to keep pace with the norms of the times technology-wise, it’s really intriguing and worth exploring why we don’t take that effort when it comes to ideas.

Ideas precede action. Mind precedes matter. We don’t know yet empirically, if it can ever be measured that is, whether something supra-mental exists. The problem science faces is this. It assumes existence is confined to gross physicality. Einstein’s ‘brain’ cannot reveal his whole personality. In other words, calculating the number of words in a journal article and thus gauging its quality will not reveal its originality or the lack of it thereof. Einstein is more than the organs his gross physical body was made of. Science and scientists who study DNAs to measure genius run the risk of imposing ignorance and superstition consciously in the name of education. If this is not an unpardonable crime, I cannot imagine what is.

All talk and no action will only lead to a partial act, not a complete act. Opening your mouth to eat will not ensure that the food goes inside. Partial acts are what they are, partial. They cannot accomplish anything substantial by themselves. A pawn in a chess game accomplishes as long as it complements the play of the knights, queen and the king.

Waiting to act for the right time to move to a new transdisciplinary education system is procrastination at its worst. We cannot afford to and do not have the right to hamper social development. Moving from thought to action is essential, not a luxury. Moving from rhetoric to reality is a necessity, not an option.

Ranjani Ravi
Research Associate, The Mother’s Service Society

Student-driven Education Creates New Careers

An efficient learning tool stirs students’ enthusiasm to create his own learning path. YouTube has emerged as a rich knowledge content of video resources, by allowing users to upload videos, watch and comment for free. People can create their own fame by sharing a video that appeals to the masses. Countless talented individuals, like the Canadian singer Justin Bieber, are discovered in YouTube by their creations.

Armed with handheld devices and easy-to-access tools, content creators are uploading 100 hours of video every minute to the site. YouTube Partner Program allows the creator of the video to share the revenue produced by advertisements. This led to the rise of content creators, who realized their potential to earn money and fame, monetizing their passion. The list of YouTubers who earn over a million per year from their videos includes kids, teens and adults alike from around the world.

Matthew Patrick had an intense passion for learning and scored a perfect score of 1600 on his SAT. He studied theater and neuroscience in Duke University but was not successful in securing a job. Matthew created videos called “Game theory” studying video games and then constructed new ideas and theories about the games. He created a highly popular web series in YouTube and made a career out of it. He is currently the CEO of Theorist Inc., a consultancy and production house that helps clients such as Samsung and Warner Bros. build an online presence and find audience in the digital space.

Founded in 2009, Maker Studios produced content for three YouTube channels. By 2012, Maker Studios achieved a billion views a month and had 1,000 channels signed under its network. This American multi-channel network grew popular worldwide and was recently bought by Disney for 500 million dollars.

The common characteristic of the content creators is that they start as amateurs and immediately realize that they must be an expert in their field. YouTubers learn a wide range of skills like visual design, scripts, storyboards, framing, animation, lighting and sound techniques for video production. They educate themselves to create a strong brand by customizing the channel to express their identity and visually connect with the audience.

The resulting hands-on knowledge in marketing strategy and data analysis gives them the insight on current trends. They develop the habit of learning every day to keep up with emerging technology and gadgets.

YouTubers confess that more than the content, their personality draws the audience and sustains the viewership count. They proactively learn soft skills like leadership, empathy, resilience and mindfulness to increase traffic and to connect with loyal audience. Online forums and workshops provide space for collaboration where they solve problems, learn new techniques and benefit from one another. YouTube success stories prove that a well-organized content creator can become a celebrity and entrepreneur. The experience in building a YouTube channel also aids them in securing careers such as Content Coordinator, Audience Development Strategist and Market Research Analyst in corporations and institutions. YouTubers demonstrate that Passion-Based Learning energizes and motivates students to accomplish.

Vani Senthil
Research Associate, The Mother’s Service Society

Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Charitable Foundation

Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Charitable Foundation is a private Ukrainian endowment fund established in 2009 and aimed to encourage and promote a new generation of young, professional and patriotic Ukrainians capable of transforming Ukraine in the future.

Starting from fall 2012, the Foundation has been implementing its own key long-term program called “Young Generation Will Change Ukraine”.

The objective of the program is to help create a critical mass of young people who would be able to carry out the future transformation of Ukraine, as its current state has to be improved. According to the program selected groups of young people choose one of the effective European countries, i.e. Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland or Poland and study their experience.

The participants work in teams of 6-7 members, each team ideally composed of a lawyer, a political analyst, an economist, a sociologist, an ecologist, a cultural anthropologist or a person with deep interest in the above mentioned areas. After studying all the components of the societal architecture of the mentioned countries, including their constitution, governmental structure, ideologies of key political parties, economic and social system, and environmental policies, groups plan a 6-day study trip to the country in question. The Foundation finances the study trips and covers other related expenses.

During the trip, organized completely by the groups themselves, when meeting with decision-makers, experts, governors, MPs and businessmen of the chosen country they select the “components” for the political, economic, social “architecture” of future Ukraine. The groups then compare and evaluate their findings, share them with other groups and youth organizations, write reports, and develop programs of action to carry out the transformation of Ukraine. The results of the studies are presented in mass media and on different events, including the Foundation’s Annual Conference, round tables and discussions.

After this phase all the participants are encouraged to take part in the local elections, and work at state administrations at different levels, from local to national.

Since 2012, more than 365 participants have taken part in the Program. The most active participants became members of the Association “Young Generation Will Change Ukraine” launched by the Foundation in 2014.

Young Generation Will Change Ukraine is an example of cooperation, not competition. The Foundation therefore does not create single leaders but manages team players who could become leaders. The program does not place restrictions on participants but encourages them to be creative and innovative in their research and reporting. The participants of the program learn in the process, they are not taught by the Foundation. The Program is also about responsibility, as all the groups work on a voluntary basis.

The Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations & Diplomacy

The Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations and Diplomacy is a private institution of higher education established in 2009, in Zagreb, Croatia. It is the leading institution for training experts in the field of international relations and diplomacy in Croatia. It boasts a high level of expertise and of scientific and ethical standards.

It is based on the Bologna model: three years for B.A. degree followed by two years for M.A. degree. DHUC established numerous collaborations with universities including Ljubljana, Geneva, Belgrade, Podgorica, Tetovo, Skopje, Bucharest, Budapest, Berlin, Astana, Almaty, Tbilisi and Osijek, thereby enabling graduates to continue their PhD studies at several of these universities, notably Geneva School of Diplomacy, University of Osijek, Croatia and South East European University, Tetovo/Skopje.

The mission of the College is to train students by developing their competencies for research, creation, implementation and active management of international relations, which should ensure a better quality of life for people in the Republic of Croatia, in the region and in the world.

At the University College there are currently all student generations, from fresh high school graduates to people with life-long work experience. All of them seek new knowledge and skills in the remarkably engaging and stimulating profession of international relations and diplomacy.

DHUC is a member of the Inter University Centre and of World University Consortium, as well as one of the centers of the World

Academy of Art and Science. In collaboration with WAAS and WUC, DHUC has organized several international conferences: Dubrovnik 2012 and Zagreb 2013, and in cooperation with collaborating universities’ conferences in Zagreb in 2014 and 2015. Presidents of Croatia: S. Mesić and I. Josipović, President of Romania E. Constantinescu, as well as UNOG DG K-J. Tokayev, ExSec of CTBTO T. Tóth, members of European Leadership Network led by Lord D. Browne and of Pugwash Movement (Nobel Laureate) led by secretary general P. Cotta Ramusino visited DHUC, gave lectures and attended these conferences. Since 2012 over 200 students have obtained their BA and/or MA. DHUC issues its scientific journal Međunarodne Studije (International Studies) published bilingually: English and Croatian.

DHUC is regularly organizing courses in diplomatic protocol and conflict resolution for provincial administration of Croatia. DHUC is currently developing a new program: Sustainable Development and International Relations in collaboration with the Rudjer Bosković Institute, Institute for Development and International Affairs and with Sustainable Development, Energy, Water and Environmental Systems (SDEWES) organization.

DHUC organizes weekly seminars: Diplomacy in Action where ambassadors from Croatia and many countries accredited in the Republic of Croatia give lectures.

DHUC is included in the Erasmus program. Study visits of students led by the vice-dean are regularly organized and included among others visits to India, Vietnam, Cambodia, the USA, Israel, Vatican, Spain, Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia.

Pioneers in Education: Humanities, Social Media and Hybrid Learning

Ms. Deborah Lemon is a technology strategist who designs, implements and grows computer-supported and computer-mediated fluid learning environments. She develops tiered online and hybrid courses in Spanish, Social Media and Digital Citizenship. She is a faculty member at Ohlone College, California, US. She is a speaker, writer and trainer. She is the author of several distance learning courses as well as the Spanish Grammar website, drlemon.com.

Ms. Lemon believes that the humanities are being sidelined in today’s STEM-centered world. Many individuals driving the STEM-centered agenda are dismissing “humanities” as less important. Those in the humanities have assumed a defensive posture to affirm and justify their relevance. The current paradigm is based on the long-established division of information and skills into specific colleges and departments. By isolating specific topics of information, we have removed relevance from the learning process, and seemingly marginalized certain traditional “fields” of study. There is art in presentations, history in decision-making processes, psychology in all human dynamics, sociology in business, linguistics in chemistry labs.

Humanities must be integrated with science, science must be integrated with humanities: we cannot think of them as separate entities. The foundation of everything is effective and expressive communication. The humanities elements will enrich all learning experiences. Sociology, literature, history, math cannot be seen as isolated subjects: They are facets and elements necessary to purpose-driven learning. Each element can be integrated into comprehensive projects worked on by teams of individuals whose approach is based on unique interests and skills.

The future of language education is deeply rooted in social media, the nature of which is inherently communicative and cultural. The social network is a rich, communication-based environment, featuring users’ storytelling, and extemporaneous interaction with

others. It is permeating all aspects of daily life, giving it a relevance that cannot be over-estimated. More than 1 in 7 human beings on earth are on Facebook. Most social media applications and environments have unmatched accessibility; they run on any device, and have no special hardware or software requirements. Social media offers highly individualized, relevant communication and engaged collaborative language learning. It can be used for online, hybrid and face-to-face classes and reports a marked increase in online success rates, retention rates, and an increase of students continuing on with their language learning.

Attempting to recreate the traditional “classroom” dynamic online does not take advantage of the innate strengths of the new media environments. The paradigm of higher education needs to become diffuse. A network of learning media needs to be created. There is less and less value in memorizing data. Computer storage far outstrips human ability and will shortly be taking on more decision-making. Learning has to be focused on what we can do with the data and patterns, and recognizing a fundamental shift in expressive communication methods.

Human thought changed dramatically with the written word—and again, with mass-produced writing. And again, with film. And it is changing now with transmedia technologies. So the big questions we need to address about education in the future are:

• Since access to information is the key to learning, how do we get connectivity for everyone?
• What is our value as human beings in the face of AI and the singularity, and, therefore, what will be the focus of education? How do we change the focus?
• How quickly are we willing to move to prevent further education stagnation?
• How do we redefine educator roles in “education”?
• How can we redefine knowledge and step out of obsolete classifications?

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