The emerging knowledge economy demands a new relation between ‘education’ and ‘industry’ for its competitiveness in global capitalism today, blurring the boundary between learning and work, the public and the private, and knowledge business and public education at all levels. The idea of knowledge as capital underlying this demand changes the nature of knowledge for the educational concern. What does this imply for education in general and schooling in particular? How can we cope with so-called ‘the end of Education’ as a knowledge transmission? Can we re-conceive the post-industrial selfhood, sensitive to the changed economic environment while resisting dehumanization, self-fragmentation and nihilist culture consequent on the knowledge economy? Can the cultivation of humanity be a way of responding to this double challenge? What is the role of knowledge in cultivating humanity in future generation? Cultural differences represent the different meaning and value of knowledge. Different cultural understandings of knowledge and learning from the East and West may be jointly explored in search for a new vision of future education.

Possible topics that can be covered in the conference are: