In the master's thesis, we present the problem of changes in the concept of knowledge and their impact on our expectations regarding the type and quality of knowledge that should be acquired within the compulsory general education school. In the introduction, we trace the historical development of the concept of general education and general education knowledge to answer the question of how a consensus on the basic characteristics of general education and the role of knowledge in the process of general education was formed throughout history. We try to substantiate the emancipatory potential of general education knowledge as knowledge that has value in itself. In this context, we argue that it is necessary to insist on content that, in its abstractness, goes beyond the direct "everyday life" usefulness and experiential limitation of students in general education (especially in the basic school), since their ultimate goal is to teach students about the world as generally as possible and to thereby free them from the particularities of their personal circumstances and interests. Thereafter, we answer the questions of whether we can still claim that there is a social agreement on the importance of general education and its fundamental role in compulsory general education and whether knowledge is recognized by the teaching profession and the general public as a value in itself. We show that in disagreement with the described "humanistic" or "traditional" concept of knowledge, the "individualistic" belief that a human exists independently of knowledge is being increasingly established and that general, abstract knowledge is something repressive. We later argue that the departure from the humanistic conception of general education and knowledge enables the entry of economic logic into the general education program, which no longer follows the formally set goal of forming an autonomous, generally educated personality. Furthermore, we examine the connection between the described conceptual shifts in the conception of general education and knowledge and the changes in the conception of the teacher's role as a bearer of knowledge and thus the teacher's authority. We problematize the ideology of learnification, which we understand as an extremely individualistic view of the pedagogical process, where teaching is merely supporting or promoting the independent learning of students, knowledge is a matter of individual construction, and the teacher no longer occupies the position of authority as a bearer of knowledge. In the final part of the thesis, we answer the question of whether significant conceptual shifts in the understanding of knowledge and its role in compulsory general education are reflected in the official documents of the Slovenian school policy. The analysis of the working document of the Office for the Development and Quality of Education of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Science, “A look at the challenges of Slovenian education and training”, which is supposed to address the key challenges of modern education, shows that even the decision-makers in the field of Slovenian school policy are not fully aware that it will be impossible to educate future generations in general and form into autonomous, critical and moral individuals if knowledge will no longer be appreciated as a value in itself. Knowledge as a value in itself is relegated to the background in the document, problematic economic and individualistic conceptualizations of knowledge prevail, which we proved in the thesis to be in conflict with the key goals of compulsory general education.
|
