Blogs

The PASCAL Board has asked Peter Kearns, the founder of the EcCoWell approach to learning city development, to undertake a review of progress in implementing the idea since 1992 and to report to the Board by the end of this year. The summary below provides background on the EcCoWell idea and presents some questions where I would welcome comment.

Some recent documentaries/investigative interviews on Australian television have particular relevance to the topics of interest to followers of the PASCAL LCN "Meeting Today's Challenges for a Better Future" network.

The year 2016 gives one pause. The attacks of January 2015 in Paris were directed against free speech and religious tolerance; they failed: Charlie Hebdo sales are up, and opinion polls show that overwhelmingly, the French have positive views of Muslims, Jews and Europe. The attacks of November 2015 in Paris and July 2016 in Nice however succeeded in destablising through fear: people changed their daily routines or vacation plans. The elections in the UK and US are more difficult to characterize because this time, in the West, fantasy defeated fact, emotion triumphed over reason.

I am pleased to report that the special issue of the International Review of Education, edited by PASCAL Director Mike Osborne, LCN Director Peter Kearns and the former leader of the UNESCO’s Learning Cities initiative, Jin Yang, on the topic of learning cities is now available in Mandarin with the ISBN 978-7-5191-0206-7.

Some reflections on the recent campaign in the UK, whether to Remain in the EU or to Leave. No one knows the outcome of what will be a brutal political struggle in which the UK, such as it still is, will inevitably be the weaker party, negotiating from a position of weakness.