At the present time, the world capitalist system endures a prolonged ideological, economic and social crisis, promoting tension and war in order to amplify extreme use of force to accommodate alt-right conservatism. In addition, with to the above, neoliberal restructuration, apart from dismantling social welfare policies, fiercely attacks the pedagogical agency, teachers, students through the deterioration of work conditions, deskilling, commodification of public education structures, inspectorate regimes, and huge cuts in education resources. Commercialization, glorification of profits, competition, technocratic standardization, fragmentation of knowledge, class differentiation of educational institutions and studies frames the pathology of warfare against democratic, heterogenous and emancipatory alternatives in education and in society. The ethos and culture of cynicism, consumerism, academic “technicism”, political insularity, individualization, violence and nihilism needs to be confronted.
Bearing in mind that there is an epistemological cut between the idea to confirm consensus, from the one hand, and the awareness to stand against those who realize war as a mean to endorse the omnipresence of the power elite, from the other, we call for an International Conference to realize and envision a path to social justice, democracy and emancipation in a classless sociopolitical readjustment.
The fields of war, real or symbolic, material or abstract, interconnect in an implicit, tacit manner: politically (the antinomies which the capital bears internally in terms of the class struggle), critically (the historical ontology of the forms and the content of the dialectical process to edifice counter hegemonic blocs) and theoretically (in studying the neoliberal configurations in conjunction with neocolonialism and imperialism).
The international movement of Critical Education, rejecting the idea that there is no alternative to late capitalism, seeks to elaborate ideas for a school and education that meets the needs of the working class, in a society of emancipated labour, universal solidarity and comradeship.
The International Conference on Critical Education (ICCE), previously held in Athens (2011, 2012, 2017), Ankara (2013, 2024), Thessaloniki (2014, 2022), Wroclaw (2015), London (2016, 2018), Naples (2019) and Malta (2023), is a forum for scholars, educators and activists committed to social justice and social emancipation, fostering a more radically democratic public sphere where democracy, pedagogy and human agency are connected. The aim is to highlight and discuss in an international, comradely setting theoretical traditions, pedagogical ideas, educational practices and social struggle experiences that might be useful in confronting neoliberal policies in education, as well as bourgeois ideology in schools and society, in connection with the wider social movements and struggles against any form of exploitation and oppression.
Attending the 13th International Conference on Critical Education, organized by the Department of Primary Education at the Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki (Greece), provides an inspiring reminder of hope where the question of education must always be reiterated as a theoretico-practical, political and ethical struggle, that aims to serve as a springboard for dialogue and reflection and actionto anticipate local, national and international events of conflict and war, hence, reaffirm the transformative (rather than didactic and instructional) purpose of theory and praxis through the ideas of Critical and Public Pedagogy. Thessaloniki, October, 2024._
Critical Education in the times of War
1 – 5 July
Thessaloniki