UNESCO Day 2

UNESCO Day 2:

Day one felt like a game. Day too is feeling different. This conference is different everyday. Day one was only plenary sessions. We did not have the chance to really interact with each other in the sessions, and they were talking at us. I, personally, found them rather boring. However, I am not an education expert. Some were interesting, though. Day two is a chance to have “parallel” sessions. There are three themes and then two or three discussions under each theme. For a conference of over 1,200 people you need a lot of options if you want to have a real discussion. Charite and I chose our meetings so that we would not overlap and would represent WSCF at the meeting we thought were the most important. My first meeting was a plenary session on Higher Education and Social Values. Because of timing and location, I missed my second session. However, in the afternoon I went to a meeting on Higher Education and Community Research. My University, Occidental College, is very liberal and ahead of the curve in many respects. We had an office on campus called “Community Based Learning.” This office would help students, both logistically and financially, to get credit for the learning they were doing in the community. I had not realized how unique this idea is. Up that point, that was my favorite session. My next session was a presentation by the Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI). This was the only meeting that my boss had said we HAD to go to. So, of course I went. The topic was Higher Education at a Time of Transformation – Moving towards a New Social Leadership” This session turned out to be the best, in my opinion. The presentations were well done and created food for thought. One of the speakers repeatedly said that we do not need more education in our time, what we need is a different kind of education. I cannot agree more. Just simply allowing everyone to have access to higher education, as it is defined and commodified now, would not be beneficial to society. If instead, we can rethink and reinvent the education process so that it truly teaches people to think critically and to have values than higher education can continue the prominent role it has had as building leaders, societies and cultures.

As good as these meetings were there was something lacking in most of the panelists and in the people that posed questions: students. One of the panels during the parallel sessions had a student on it. One student on one panel out of the twenty four panels. One student. Higher Education’s most important stakeholder is students. Yet students were underrepresented. In my last panel I wanted to ask a question about. I was sitting in the back. I raised my hand. I kept it up. The moderator never called on me. I raised it again. She did not call on me. I raised it again. I held it in the air for a few minutes. I stood up. She still did not call on me. Finally she closed the speaker’s list without ever calling on me. Luckily, one of the speakers she had chosen was an ally with the students. We quickly went to her and explained the question and she allows us to be “part two” of her question. This was the only way that I could get my question into the panel. After this it was the closing remarks. Many of the respondents noted my question and the emphasis on students was put into the notes. That was the end of my afternoon sessions.

Day two ended up being a very long day. I’ll write more about it tomorrow.