Education has oppressive and liberatory potentials. It holds the possibility to uphold, reinforce, and perpetuate the status quo of separation, domination, and violence, or serve as a pathway of transformation and liberation towards other ways of being, knowing, and living that honor life and our interconnectedness. If we wish to see more just, peaceful, sustainable worlds, we need to create educational spaces for learning and unlearning towards them, and we need to cultivate spaces in which we can imagine, embody, and practice them now. In this online course, we will explore different branches of transformative education such as peace education, human rights education, global citizenship education, education for sustainable development, as well as movements for unschooling and self-directed education. We will explore their convergences and divergences, best practices and possibilities from these fields, as well as their limitations, and dream and envision with and beyond them.
- Professor: Stephanie Knox