We can often be overwhelmed by the sense that the future will be very much like the past. This sentiment was frequently expressed by Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), a prolific political theorist who made the United States her home after escaping Nazi Germany. Yet Arendt also held steadfastly to a belief in the chance that something quite unexpected could happen to renew our tired, worn out world. The twentieth century has often been described as the century of education, and the establishment of compulsory education in Canada and elsewhere in the Western world as well as increased access to post-secondary vocational and academic opportunities are important markers of the importance of education to our social and economic well-being. The twenty-first century raises new challenges for education and new questions for educators in neighbourhoods, cities, and rural communities all around the world.
I invite you to explore the Faculty of Education’s web-site for a glimpse of how our faculty’s programs, research and collaborative initiatives engage in the analysis of these challenges, the development of new modes of asking questions, and the crafting of creative and ethical conditions for learning and inquiry. Collectively, they demonstrate a commitment to education as worldview characterized by hope and desire, by an interest in our society’s difficult questions and issues, and by the view that teaching and learning, as well as knowledge production and knowledge dissemination are inextricably related. Improved educational success means much more than higher test scores and school completion rates to the scholars, teachers and students represented here. Greater equality, enlarged arenas of opportunity, and a better understanding and use of the strength of our human diversity are driving forces at the basis of all of our activities.
We are particularly excited about our faculty-based research centre, the York Centre for Education and Community. Under the directorship of Dr. Carl James, the Centre provides a focal point and support for collaboration, innovation, and exploration in the development of educational thought, research, practice and policy with the purpose of better understanding and transforming our educational work in the twenty-first century.
Alice Pitt
Dean, Faculty of Education