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Education, the key to individual life chances and means 'to draw out', facilitating realisation of self-potential and latent talents of an individual. Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgement and well-developed wisdom. |
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MEANING |
Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation. It was fixed in the philosophical and psychological treatises of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds that children are to be reared for citizenship, and that this required systematic schooling in what is often translated as virtue. The Greek arête translates readily as moral excellence and refers to a set of behavioural and emotional dispositions, powers of self-control, and the adoption of worthy goals. |
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Bertrand Russell said “most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so”, Allan Bloom wrote the book “The Closing of the American Mind about triviality and quality of education and George Steiner lectured topics as to what extent do today's universities reflect the history and ideals of the proud word Universitas. Fundamental is the must to lead up to ways to find the right knowledge and instructing about substances. Learning is to understand and after that the search follows of a better grade or salary in future. |
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ARTICIFIAL INTELLIGENCE CHATBOX |
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There are implications for cybersecurity (writing phishing emails and malware) and academia (ChatGPT can write introduction and abstract sections of scientific articles, which raises ethical questions. Several papers have already listed ChatGPT as co-author). |
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Columbia Global Centers |
Columbia Global Centers: Columbia University and the Columbia Global Centers have launched a distinctive initiative to provide thousands of Columbia students with access to global study and community spaces. This fall term, University students in 65 cities around the world can convene, study, collaborate, and experience new programming opportunities created just for them, in safe, comfortable, and enriching environments.
Columbia-designated spaces at existing sites and pop-up locations include our Global Centers in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Nairobi, Paris, Santiago, and Tunis, which have expanded their capacities to become study centers for students in their regions,as well as dedicated spaces at WeWork facilities inBeijing, Hong Kong, London, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, and Seoul. In addition, students can now access non-Columbia-designated spaces at WeWork facilities in another 50 cities around the world. The University has also arranged for designated space for its students in Tel Aviv, at Tel Aviv University, and in Athens, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. |
GLOBAL JUSTICE THROUGH EDUCATION |
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The Magic Mountain Revisited, Cultivating the Human Spirit in Dispirited Times
‘A man changes a lot of his ideas here.’ This is how Hans Castorp is greeted upon arrival at the sanatorium high in the Swiss mountains at Davos; but the greeting is also addressed to the reader of his story in The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann’s masterpiece. The novel ends in 1914, when the great war has erupted. We meet Hans Castorp one last time, no longer far from day-to-day reality high in the 4 mountains, but as a soldier on the battlefield. We do not know if he will survive this war. But we know that in these seven years he has received a spiritual education, a Bildung, that made him a different person, an adult — with very different ideas from when his story began. |
‘To create intellectual clarity about life itself’ – that was Thomas Mann’s ambition with his masterpiece The Magic Mountain. In the spirit of its founding novel, the Nexus Institute has been bringing together the foremost thinkers and artists from all over the world for the past 25 years. To celebrate our 25th anniversary, the Nexus Symposium 2019, ‘The Magic Mountain Revisited’, revolved around the themes and music from The Magic Mountain.
As if Settembrini and Naptha were alive today, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Aleksandr Dugin faced off on stage as defenders of the Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment. In a second debate, prominent intellectuals and artists discussed life and death, culture and politics, followed by music from the Magic Mountain performed by the world-famous tenor Ian Bostridge. Finally, a panel of young artists and activists discussed what all of this means for their generation: what kind of Bildung are they getting, what choices can they make, what challenges lie ahead for the future? For us, too, the question remains: what should be our view of humanity and the world? Which teacher should we follow? Should it be Lodovico Settembrini? This Italian freemason and humanist detests religion and metaphysics, but fully trusts in the goodness of human nature, the power of reason, and the power of literature, because, he believes, beautiful words lead to beautiful deeds or Naphta, a devoted communist Jesuit, who wishes to convert us to a completely different view of humanity and the world. For him liberalism, humanism, capitalism are nothing but empty intellectual notions that can do nothing to nourish the spiritual yearnings of human beings. |
mobility between lower and higher education levels |
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In order to improve understanding and quality of global justice through education and to promote mobility between lower and higher education levels, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science undertook initiatives:
Students themselves started to improve mobility from lower to higher education during the Dutch ECS StudentLab there was cooperation for four months with other lower and higher students. They looked into the mind of the minister or school director. |
Together they worked on concrete plans for better information, preparation, guidance and more study successes of lower graduates who pass on to the higher education.
Early this year, student labs were organized throughout the Netherlands. Groups of advanced lower and higher graduates with a lower education backround worked together under professional guidance. The target? To reduce the loss of secondary school students in higher education!
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A UNIVERSITY |
Fundamentals of the university: academic freedom, institutional autonomy, intertwining of education and research, responsibility towards society and being open to each other and to each other's cultures
Leiden University has celebrated on February 10, 2017, the official opening of Wijnhaven, the latest housing location in The Hague of Leiden University. During the festive occasion, the participants emphasized the value of a modern establishment in the heart of The Hague. Wijnhaven is one of the three locations of Leiden University on the campus of The Hague. Situated between the Ministries and near the Central Station building is an ideal base for students and researchers. Since January 30 follow college students in the brand new building. In the coming years Wijnhaven will become an academic center for about 4,500 students. Metropolitan issues 'Leiden University has long been spread over two cities. The rector magnificus: "The branch in The Hague offers students and researchers much. It is after all the international city of peace, justice and security. Look for example at the housing of the meeting place of both houses of the States General of the Netherlands, as well as the Ministry of General Affairs and the office of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and national and international courts of justice that are of great interest to our political scientists, political scientists and lawyers. And the Hague is also a nice base to study urban issues." Leiden University, founded in 1575, is one of Europe's foremost international research universities. The university has seven faculties in the alpha, beta and gamma domain, is headquartered in Leiden and The Hague and has over 6,500 employees and 26,900 students. Her motto is Praesidium Libertatis - Stronghold of Liberty. |
Are universities political? October 1, 2024, the European University Institute raised this question because today's world. This is the question that the heated debates of recent years on the authority of science, on the responsibility of universities, and on academic freedom have raised. Answering this question requires restating the role that universities should play in today’s world. Drawing on the history of these particular institutions and on contemporary developments, this lecture re-examines the paradoxical position of universities, which are both building blocks of the societies they serve while at the same time claiming a separate place, insulated from social pressures. This perspective helps to clarify a number of misunderstandings regarding their autonomy. Weber’s famous principle of 'axiological neutrality' actually describes a tension between independence and involvement that structures the existence of universities. As a result, universities can be said to have two historical specificities. First, while they do not have a monopoly on knowledge, they provide conditions that are uniquely conducive to the exercise of reflexivity. One of the most important of these is time – the time to take a step back from the world, which is essential for knowing how to act in it. Second, universities are first and foremost communities. While these communities were originally made up of professors or students, they have diversified and expanded far beyond campus walls and conventions. We need to take a fresh look at these reconfigured academic communities and the way they act in the world. Only then can universities strengthen their role as a reflexive community at the critical intersection of academia, politics and society. |
What a proud word universitas is, the whole, total, what program was already with Plato |
‘Universitas?’ Part I. Read Steiner’s full lecture in Becoming Human Is an Art. In our times, there are still educational institutions which call themselves universities. But do they still have a claim to universitas, the all-encompassing ideal of knowledge which the West inherited from Athens and Rome? In an unequalled indictment of the spirit of our times, George Steiner, world-renowned literary scholar and cultural critic, lectures modern universities. His criticism contains an exhortation to us all. |
educational benefits for European society |
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European-wide cooperation among civil society organisations is also promoted by the European Civil Society Platform on Lifelong Learning (EUCIS-LLL). It is made up of 24 European networks active in education and training in order to build a citizen's voice on lifelong learning issues and to propose concrete solutions based on the expertise, the competencies and the experience of its networks' experts and practitioners.
The platform fosters a vision of lifelong learning that promotes equity, social cohesion (for which the project BeLL is looking for benefits) and active citizenship. It believes that the objectives of education and training should not only be described in terms of employability or economic growth but also as a framework for personal development. It is essential to raise awareness on the fact that lifelong learning should include a large range of learning settings and create more complementarity and continuity between formal, non-formal and informal learning. |
FINANCIAL LITERACY |
Transforming the system |
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What is an Educated Man? |
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THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR ( Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882) |
"The American Scholar" is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson that was first delivered as a lecture in 1837. In this work, Emerson reflects on the role and responsibilities of the American scholar in society. He argues that the American scholar should strive to be independent, self-reliant, and guided by their own intuition and judgment. He also notes that the American scholar should reject the European tradition of blindly accepting authority and instead seek to embrace new ideas and perspectives. |
JOHN ADAMS WRITES TO ABIGAIL: ‘I MUST STUDY POLITICS AND WAR’ |
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine." (John Adams in a letter May 12, 1780 posted from Paris to his wife Abigail) |