What's new in education?
In this episode, we ask if there is anything new in education and learning over the past 2500 years. Much of today's research is about confirming what philosophers and others have known. What seems to be new is our ability to provide learning to all children and perhaps especially to children with special needs. At the same time, to learn is to control or master something and perhaps this era of mass education is making the human footprint larger and unsustainable. Maybe education itself is not sustainable? Central to our discussion is the possibility of creating an education that is sustainable and what importance spirituality and philosophy have to say for an alternative way of educating for a sustainable future.
Creators and Guests
Host
Knut Ove Æsøy
Knut Ove Æsøy grew up in Florø, a small town with about 10,000 inhabitants in the far west of Norway. The town provided closeness to nature and especially the sea, and much of his upbringing was about fishing and farming in addition to school and sports. He began working in industry at an early age before choosing an academic career. He has a doctorate in philosophy of science and currently works at OsloMet and the education of Norway's future teachers.
Host
Steven Phelps
Steven received dual bachelors’ degrees in physics and philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. He subsequently worked for 13 years at the Bahá’í World Center in Haifa, Israel in its Research Department, where he coordinated the indexing and collation of the Bahá’í Sacred Writings and their translation from Persian and Arabic into English. During that period, he concurrently held an academic appointment in the Physics Department at the Technion University in Haifa and published original research on the masses of nearby galaxies. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon with his wife and three daughters. He loves armchair philosophizing and the great outdoors."
