The Educational Process As a Space for Understanding Global Challenges: A Socio-Philosophical Analysis

Abstract

Philosophy has historically developed, first of all, as a socio-pedagogical enterprise, not so much the reflections of individuals, but rather an institutional mentoring activity, a technology for the formation of a certain type of a person. On the other hand, pedagogy has basically been and remains a philosophical search, over which certain educational technologies are only being built. There is a deep interpenetration between the sphere of philosophical thought and the sphere of education: the forms of introduction to philosophical thought have a significant impact on the content of philosophical theory. Therefore, scientific and philosophical reflection on the global problems of our time is inseparable from the educational process, within which these problems are constructed both at the level of professional consciousness and at the level of mass consciousness. In this regard, the authors focus not on the usual political or environmental aspects of the subject, but on the place of global problems as a phenomenon of human existence in the structure of the life-world. The appeal to the life-world – one of the central concepts of phenomenology – allows us to bridge the gap between the objective scientific picture of nature (including society) and its living-through in our consciousness, that is, the actual being of a human (we will try to avoid the term "subjectivity"). This gap is obviously one of the reasons for the inefficiency of environmental practices over the past hundred years. The authors used the phenomenological method, logical analysis, interviewing and surveys, methods of humanitarian expertise of the educational project. The research included grounding phenomenological approach to the problem (V.V. Mineev), concretization of the initial philosophical concept and conducting empirical research, including questionnaires, surveys and interviews (N.A. Popkova), as well as psychological and pedagogical expertise, assessment of the applicability of the approach in practice (S.I. Artemyeva). This article presents only a part of the results obtained. It is shown that the human life-world can be considered as the basis for the unity of global problems that express one of the deep phenomena of being-in-the-world which is being-to-death. In the modern epoch, all elements of the structure of the life-world are undergoing transformation, and the task of education is to promote maintaining consciousness of personal responsibility for solving universal problems, for being itself.