“complex Global Problems, Simple Lifelong Learning Solutions.” Discuss

In their introduction to this symposium, Biesta and Osberg argue that complexity theory has pointed to the fundamental unpredictability of the real, and to the ways in which educational practices cannot be controlled. This is in line with Freud’s comment that education is an impossible profession because it cannot mandate or master the future. It also echoes Derrida on undecidability and responsibility. The impossible is that which cannot be foreseen prior to its invention, its actual emergence. To act responsibly therefore is to accept this incalculability to the future, our inability to mandate, and to invent on this basis. To not do so, to subsume one’s actions to a rationale of thinking that we do know what will happen in the future, that it can be engineered, is to act irresponsibly. Complexity theory then is linked to a series of theoretical innovations that suggest a more contingent engagement with the world based on impossibility, undecidability and responsibility. This is inscribed in the concept of strong emergence (Osberg and Biesta 2007).