This
account is inserted here as a summary for those who, although
claiming historic awareness, show no real instinct for history.
This summary says that education is the result of many changes
in the condition of humankind and makes clear that these
alterations continue. They also entail a responsibility to
improve the experience of education and re-establish its
connection to the broader framework of human activity, instead
of limiting education to the requirements of cultural continuity.
It has been said, again and again, that what we are we had to
learn to become. Actually, we are who and what we are through
what we do in the context of our individual and social
existence. To speak, write, and read means to understand what
we say, what we write, and what we read. It is not only the
mechanical reproduction of words or sound patterns, which
machines can also be programmed to perform. The expectation of
speaking, reading, and writing is manifested in all human
interactions. To learn how to speak, write, and read means both
to gain skills and to become aware of the pragmatic context of
interhuman relations that involve speaking, writing, and
reading. It also means awareness of the possibility to change
this context.
To educate today means to integrate others, and in the process
oneself, in an activity-oriented process directed towards
sharing the knowledge necessary to gain further knowledge.
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