Illeris on society and learning
.. learning is an important mediating connection in a most topical question about whether human qualities are able to match and cope with current societal structures which the very same human capacities have been the incentives for developing - or whether societal development has taken over the last bit of power from the human basis that has created it and is about to destroy its own existence.
Learning, in this connection, is not just a neutral process. Learning might contribute to the strengthening both of human forces and of blind societal developments - and societally institutionalised learning efforts in education and other places are, consequently, not just value-neutral technical or economic matters. Therefore, the study of the nature of learning and understanding of its mode of functioning and significance is not only a scholarly and hugely complex matter, it is also input for the societal development that can make a contribution to maintaining a central and specifically human perspective in a world in which economic and technological lines of approach seem to be on the way to making mankind an object of its own fantastic creations.
In other words, are we learning and teaching ourselves into passivity, and maybe even into redundancy? Is ‘The Technium’ taking over?
From: Illeris, K. (2007). How We Learn: Learning and Non-learning in School and Beyond (3rd ed.). New York, NY, USA: Routledge. p 261.
