Education, its objectives and methods, are at the heart of the current political debate. All societies and all states are almost constantly reflecting on the problems posed by the education of children, young people and, more recently, the permanent education of adults. The discussion focus on four basic aspects: what is the purpose of education in a society; what should be the content and methods of this education attending to its objectives; who should be the actors involved in educational responsibility; and finally, what priority should education have in terms of expenditure and funding.
Within this debate, the education on humanities raises its own problems. Firstly, the very usefulness of humanities education is in question. The debate, however, is largely artificial: the usefulness of any kind of education, including but not only humanities, depends on the objectives that have been set for the education system. Within this framework, it is important to reflect on the contribution of humanistic education in a varied and variable scenario of educational objectives.
Secondly, it is necessary to consider what kind of humanistic content can and should be transmitted. This is a question linked to the previous one: even if a community accepts the need for a significant presence of humanistic content in education systems, it is necessary to determine which are the most appropriate in terms of the objectives of the system in general. This is where the debate between formative and informative objectives as essential elements of any education, but which can be combined in different ways, plays a crucial role. And one of the aspects of this debate is the contrast between more traditional fields of humanistic studies and the new fields that are opening up today within this area of knowledge, research and teaching.The key question is to what extent should or could traditional and more innovative teaching be combined?
Thirdly, the cultural aspects should also be taken into consideration. Each country or culture has its own educational tradition, which continues to weigh heavily on the development of educational programmes. However, in an increasingly global world, these idiosyncratic aspects are confronted with new challenges and with the need to consider their own survival. Moreover, it is impossible for educational systems, like societies in general, in different parts of the world, not to be influenced by each other, and this poses new problems of adaptation to a multicultural context.
In this context, the 4th CIPSH Academy aims to compare the situation of humanities education in Chinese and Western cultures, particularly in Europe. The dialogue between specialists in both culture and education from the Chinese and European worlds can provide some keys to the analysis of the current situation, but it can also offer a forecast of the evolution of humanistic education in the future and even put forward programmatic proposals for the development of education systems.
Attending these principles and objectives, the main issues proposed for discussion are the following:
1. Education and teaching of humanistic contents in a global world: aims, possibilities (focusing on the possibility of collaboration of different traditions, in particular the Chinese and the Western ones).
2. Humanistic knowledge as a vehicle for education in the classical tradition and in education today (in particular in the Chinese and European world).
3. The teaching of Western languages and cultures in the Chinese world and of Chinese language and culture in European and Western education.