The Crisis in Education

What is the purpose of education in the 21st Century? Who should decide the content of the curriculum? Why is everyone worried about what young people should learn and how? Professor Frank Furedi, sociologist, commentator and author of numerous books including: Wasted: Why Education isn’t Educating and Power of Reading: From Socrates to Twitter.

In this Engaging Sociology lecture, Professor Furedi will discuss the problems caused for students and educators alike by the relentless churn of education policy informed more by the imperative of social engineering than by the need for the transmission and creation of knowledge. He will put the case for a humanist education, the value of the liberal arts, and the importance of freedom of speech and thought in higher education today.

About the speaker

Frank Furedi is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, a prolific author, and an influential social commentator. He has written extensively about issues to do with education and cultural life. Wasted: Why Education Is Not Educating (2009) deals with the influence of the erosion of adult authority on schooling. On Tolerance (2011) offers a restatement of the importance of this concept for an open society. Authority: A Sociological History (2013) examines how the modern world has become far more comfortable with questioning authority than with affirming it.  Power Of Reading: From Socrates to Twitter  (2015)  outlines the case for a culture of reading.