"The education train is headed for a station that is now already demolished!"

Behind the participants were four days of intensive discussion about the
socio-political dimension of education and its potential to contribute to a socio-ecological
transformation of society. The conference was thus also a step towards strengthening political education
as political action for a social-ecological transformation.

Learners need hope in the ability to shape society

Bettina Lösch from the "Forum Critical Political Education" explains in her contribution to the
opening panel: "We have to deal with education in the context of finiteness. The
climate change and multiple global crises require a far-reaching social-ecological
transformation, in which power relations are fundamentally changed. Therefore, the
current education system must also be fundamentally questioned."

With this in mind, Sanja Bökle and Jana Lou Herbst of the Quix Collective asked in their impulse:
"Whose knowledge do we actually know?" They critically examined how power relations operate in
educational contexts and which interests play a role.

For transformative education, the importance of emotions was highlighted. In this regard,
speaker Dr. Mandy Singer-Brodowski (Institute for Futures Research, Freie Universität Berlin)
made it clear: "It is not enough for learners to understand that things are going wrong. At the same time,
they also need confidence and hope in the ability to shape society, as well as tools to become politically active
."

Solidarity with Fridays for Future

Fedelma Wiebelitz and Nisha Toussaint Teachout from the youth NGO "Democratic Voice
of Youth" criticized in their presentation that schools and universities have so far done too little justice to these challenges
: "We are sitting on an educational train that is heading for a station
that has now already been demolished!" Yet today's world is the direct result of education in the
past, he said. Thus, there would also be great potential to shape a future
society through self-directed learning.

Exactly this step goes the pupils of the movement Fridays for Future, which do not go for
weeks on Fridays to school, in order to strike for effective climatic protection. Four
representatives from Kassel spoke at the conference on Friday. The pupils made very
urgently clear that it is serious to them with their request: ?Naturally we risk personal disadvantages by the
absence in instruction. But it is about our future and we have
little time left. At the same time, we also learn a lot during our actions."

Conference participants, including many teachers, showed solidarity with the
Fridays for Future movement in a public action on campus.

The conference brought together more than 300 education stakeholders from
the in-school and out-of-school sectors from February 21-24, 2019. In addition to panels and keynote presentations,
hosted over 60 workshops. The conference was organized by a grassroots organizing group
, which includes teachers and researchers as well as actors from more
than ten civil society organizations.

The main organizers were the University of Kassel (Department of Didactics of Political
Education), the Forum Critical Political Education and the Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie from
Leipzig.

Further information at www.bildung-macht-zukunft.de