Faure’s new social contract fifty years later: Promises and evolutions

Abstract

The International Commission on the Development of Education set up by UNESCO in 1971 was chaired by Edgar Faure. The conceptualisation of a new social contract in his work between the 1960s and 1970s had a strong influence on the final report prepared by this commission. Published in 1972, Learning to be: The world of education today and tomorrow is commonly known as the Faure report. Although not explicitly mentioned in the report, the idea of a new social contract provided a political framework for re-establishing the particular relationship between education and society, based on a strong belief in an educational democracy which considered citizens as real agents of change. Fifty years after the publication of the Faure report, another report commissioned by UNESCO, on the Futures of Education, has taken up the idea of the social contract, conceiving it as a means to transform education to harness greater cooperation towards more sustainable futures. However, while the understanding of the social contract elaborated by Faure translated into a clear vision of the emancipatory function of education for the fulfilment of individuals within democratic societies, the political discussion on the relationship among the institutions that should govern the new social contract for education presented in the Futures of Education report appears less explicit. This article discusses the extent to which the principles underpinning the new social contract for education, especially the notion of education as a common good, provide the political framing of a new social contract for education. It examines the relevance of the political discussion of the relationship between education and society elaborated in the Faure report fifty years ago with regard to the formulation of a new social contract for education.