Call For Book Proposals - A Volume in Transforming Education for the Future

Call For Book Proposals

A volume in Transforming Education for the Future
Series Editors Jing Lin, University of Maryland—College Park
Vachel Miller, Appalachian State University
and Amanda Fiore, University of Maryland—College Park

Humanity is facing unprecedented challenges. Critical issues, such as world conflicts, climate change, structural inequality, and moral decay, if not dealt with, can bring a total breakdown of human civilization. Right now, we have all the tools we need to destroy our planet, either slowly, by continuing to injure the physical environment, or rapidly, through armed conflict and nuclear war. Moreover, despite unprecedented tools for cross-cultural connection, our human civilization continues to be plagued by intolerance, dehumanization, and fear, deepening the divides that make violence possible in the first place. If we continue on this path, we risk not only annihilating our enemies, but the whole human race and other species on Earth. 

Education has long been heralded as one of the most promising and important tools for positive global change. But in the U.S., and many countries around the world, educational systems are bogged down by old philosophies and structural problems that exacerbate social inequalities and the destruction of nature. Education is supposed to prepare citizens with the ability, awareness, and wisdom to deal with crises and continually learn and grow, but it still operates on an almost purely mechanistic, rationalistic, capitalistic, and highly competitive paradigm. 

The U.S. and the world need a new educational paradigm based on a different, far richer, more insightful understanding of human possibility, to tackle the social, moral, and spiritual problems that stand in our way, which are leading to our existential crises and destruction of the Earth. This paradigm must be strong enough to transform current educational thinking and practice. It must be creative and expansive enough to transform the heart and mind of people which would transform the world. 

What kinds of education do we need to transform the world? To answer this, we need to address a number of other questions. For instance, what types of skills will people, both young and old, require to contribute to the common good? What can education do to motivate people toward cooperation and harmony? What is our deepest, most heartfelt hope for a compassionate human race, and how can education help manifest this hope? Can Enlightenment rationality, individualism, and rigor share a berth with wisdom, intuition, and compassion in the education of the future? Can education develop a humanity that is not just intelligent but wise? Can education, which is often viewed as a very conservative cultural institution, become a change we want to see?

We are looking to publish books that:

• Are forward-looking and provide positive, transformative, and innovative ideas to propel education as an agent of social change for a peaceful, sustainable, and equitable world;
• Propose new paradigms for social and global changes that promote the integration of science and religion, and the unity of body, mind, and spirit;
• Address critical challenges that face humanity in areas such as peace, the environment, and social morality;
• Critically examine historical hierarchies of power and privilege around the world, including the hierarchy between humans and nature, and the structural inequalities they create, to provide us with the kind of clarity we need to imagine a more equitable, love-based future;
• Offer new ways of learning that educate wise and global citizens and are based on ecological/interconnected frameworks.