Cultural Studies and Europe Cultural studies, education and scholarship

Education and scholarship represent continuous and constantly changing processes of acquisition, change and production of human operative knowledge. Cultural studies are particularly challenged in the current highly charged atmosphere characterised by deep divisions in perception between those still adhering to a partially outdated "humanistic" educational ideal of the 19th century, and those pursuing a shortsighted scientistic conception of an economics-driven conveyor belt production of industry and service oriented skills. It is here that cultural studies must present a new educational and intellectual concept and directives for its concrete realisation. Education and scholarship policies based on cultural studies can only succeed in the twenty first century when they proceed from a comprehensive understanding of culture as well as of the dynamics in all people of cognition of culturally conditioned knowledge. That human life and learning is increasingly subject to an accelerating dynamic of change is itself becoming a principle of education: in future, curricula for all levels of education must be so structured that they can be continually modified to suit new circumstances in and requirements of the information society. These modifications must be able to proceed free of administrative, political or legal hurdles. However, at the same time a common invariant basis must be maintained, namely through a perspective oriented by cultural studies: to produce knowledge means to produce culture. These cultures do not remain abstract ideas however, but are lived out concretely - in the entertainment culture, in industry, the economy, in the scientific culture of universities and research centres, in the culture of government and in all other manifestations of cultural processes. The increasing importance of technology in human life requires radical transformation in all educational and scholarly endeavours. The Internet has long been one of the most important media for this process, and new cultural forms for interactive learning have long since emerged in the Internet. Those seeking knowledge are increasingly taking the initiative in learning processes, while knowledge providers are largely losing their monopoly as bearers of the Holy Grail of learning. Their position is instead increasingly that of attendant to those pursuing knowledge, a position which allows them to learn alongside their students. It has become a central task of cultural studies in future to actively form and assist, paedagogically and didactically, the dynamic processes at the heart of this new learning and educational culture, and not only to analyse them.