Education, one of the most crucial factors in the development, is expected to empower people with the knowledge and skills to improve their lives and with the values and attitudes to live together.

  Historically and otherwise, the realm of education has been central to the socio-economic, political, technological and cultural transformation of societies. Education enables people to acquire the values, knowledge and skills required for the present as well as for the future. Despite the national and international commitments in this regard, education is a right still denied to millions of people around the world. The divide among nations as haves and have-nots as well as the division within is a function of the nature and extent of the lopsided educational accomplishments.

Paradoxically, education is yet to address the vital concerns of most societies even today. It is in this regard that the UNESCO observed that education systems are required to develop strategies that promote inclusion, quality assurance, innovation and sustainable development. Despite the centrality of education for development, its correlation with peace, conflict, inclusion/ exclusion and sustainable development, it has not received adequate consideration in academic parlance. The renewed   interest in the peace education and the increasing awareness on the symbiotic relations between education, environment and sustainable development as well as on the matters associated with its inclusion/ exclusion need further attention.

 

It is the pivotal role of education for sustainable development that made the UN 

and various  other international fora   to declare  2005 -2014  as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development(ESD) way back during 2002(UN General Assembly Resolution 57/ 254 )

 

The Four key objectives of the ESD decade are:

• Facilitating networking  and collaboration among stakeholders in ESD
• Fostering greater quality of teaching and learning in ESD
• Supporting countries in achieving their Millennium Development Goals through ESD efforts
• Providing countries with new opportunities and tools to incorporate ESD in education reform efforts.

Further, this realization found expression in the Palermo Declaration adopted by the 2009 G8 University Students Summit. 

The Declaration maintains,  among other things:

 

• that the Universities should adopt an interdisciplinary approach in their educational curricula and research, supported by appropriate funding, thus promoting decisional processes that are conscientious, balanced and responsible at the economic, social, technical, political , human and environmental level.
• that the training of teachers, at all educational levels should be based on principles and practices that ensure the promotion of a culture of lawfulness and peace adequate to the challenges of our times.

On the other side, the realities of exclusion / inclusion continue to plague in one way or other the education efforts all over the world. Inter related issues pertaining to access and equity have made the realm of education further problematic.  In that sense, it is a universal social problem capable of precipitating volcanic ruptures. The idea of education for social responsibilities is nothing new as such, but an increasingly urgent one among educators and communities alike. Given the unprecedented speed of global changes, from political decisions that have accelerated environmental destruction to the increasing inequity among the world’s rich and poor, education for peace has become a genuine interdisciplinary school of thought. 

The discourse on education witnessed a new turn with the GATS/WTO Agreement that made the opening up of the realm of education mandatory. The process of the internationalization of higher education enforced by the provisions in the GATS Agreement has precipitated  a variety of hitherto unknown challenges  in this direction, especially on matters related to the quality, mobility and regulatory frameworks. The newer forms of internationalization characterized by the movement of campuses abroad, high cost of tuition, recruitment of students by fake stake holders, etc., appear to be  not in the fitness of things. The very idea and practice of virtual universities are most likely to exacerbate the ongoing crisis in education. In turn, it is high time to devise appropriate national, regional and institution specific policies to address the challenges as well as to make domestic academic systems competitive and socially relevant. 

    
Perhaps, the Indian experience in the realm of education and higher education in particular   is reflective of the deepening global crisis. With the educational reforms now under way, stimulated by the GATS commitments and partly by the demands of economic growth and social development, the crisis has taken a new direction. The size, structure and growth of the educational system in India are riddled with many contradictions.  A weak educational system inherited from the colonial past and subsequently experimented with for over half a century has reached the cross roads. Commercialization, commodifcation , privatization   and opening up have made the realm of education one of the most crucial concerns of the society. While issues related to the accesses and equity continue to reverberate, pro-market and outward oriented policies appear to be the thrust of the national policy.  The issues of inclusive growth and equity in accesses continue to dominate the discourse on education in the country.

The state of Kerala had the pride of place in the realm of higher education for a long time, for whatever reasons thereof. Kerala society was an exception to most of the issues outlined above for a long time. However, the direction of education in Kerala today is not much encouraging as many such issues and challenges that characterize the national and global education seems to stage a comeback. Obviously, there is ample scope for an examination of the realm of education vis-à-vis peace, social inclusion and sustainable development at the regional, national and global context.
Specifically, the proposed international conference will provide a forum for dialogue between all stake holders drawn from academia, policy making and administration.