As part of International Academic Freedom Day, HRinI will be presenting posts and commentaries on the subject of human rights, social justice and education.

Education is at a critical juncture in history. At every level, the role of educators and spaces of learning is being re-evaluated and altered, often for the worse. In part this is a continuation of a process of constant renegotiation at the heart of education and learning. Education does not mean gathering the necessary knowledge to interact with the world as it is, it means questioning why the world is as it is. As critical educators argue, to learn is to strive to ignite an ecstatic openness to the future and processes of becoming a more just, more empathetic, more equal and – above all – more inquisitive society.

This ideology is, however, under threat. Over time education has become seen as little more than a service – a standardised, formulaic means to an end. As such the aim of creating a more socially just society through experimenting with how we learn or what learning involves or asking new questions is less important. In this, we have been complicit in the creation of a social expectation that learning and education take certain forms and conform to pre-established guidelines. Spaces of learning are now structured to fit in to a system which runs against the aspiration of education to evoke change and present alternatives.

Not only this, but in allowing education and spaces of learning to become standardised we have also allowed them to become regulated and it is this which today’s blog carnival – coinciding with International Academic Freedom Day – will focus on. Over the course of today our contributors will highlight some of the main challenges facing education today. These include questions of the ‘policing’ of students and educators under counter-terrorism legislation, the role of religion within schools, the monitoring of those who choose to educate outside state facilities, the closing of university departments who do not fulfil the ends of a neoliberal society, and the freedom of academics to question the system in which they operate. In discussing these problems are aim is to highlight how, though frequently ignored, debates in education speak to debates in society as a whole and that, when our right to learn is challenged, our human rights are equally under threat.