Knowledge, Truth, and Education in Post-Normal Times

ABSTRACT

The advent of Covid-19, a new and highly contagious form of Corona virus, in late 2019 cast a harsh light on human vulnerabilities and on the provocations (and opportunities) facing humanity. Although many of the more drastic measures applied within educational settings have since ceased to apply, at least for the time being, we are not yet ‘past Covid’: many of the challenges that are discussed here still exist. As we faced unprecedented disruption to economies, societies and education systems, the global health pandemic drew attention to existing inequalities and presented a clear picture of steps required for addressing the education of close to one billion students whose learning was hampered due to school closures. The magnitude of this challenge was and still is starkly manifest with the digital divide on the African continen. Democratization of education has been perceived to include facilitation of both formal and epistemic access (including allocation of new technologies for teaching and learning), reconceptualization of knowledge, truth and learning, recognition of ‘other standpoints for knowledge’ and ‘very different knowledge registers,’ recovery of ‘lost knowledge resources’ and connection of ‘multiple ways of knowing,’ and respectful engagement ‘with indigenous and local knowledges,’ idea that merit critical interrogation.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• knowledge
• online education
• post-normal times

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Connectivism is ‘the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore learning consist of the ability to construct and traverse those networks’ (Downes 2007, 1).

2. It should be noted at this juncture that the notion of ‘valid knowledge’ (see Bates 2019, 48, 59, 66), like ‘true knowledge’, is a tautology. Knowledge cannot, by definition, be anything but valid and true. Knowledge may be generated via ethically dubious (if not repugnant) means, as in Mengele’s Auschwitz experiments on Jewish twins or as in vivisection, but this does not make it any less ‘valid’ or ‘true’.

3. It should be noted that this is, of course, a decidedly non-relativist injunction.

4. The outbreak of the global pandemic led to an unsurprising rejuvenation of appeals to traditional knowledge, with some rather bizarre assertions and recommendations. The president of Madagascar introduced a health drink called ‘Covid Organics’, which is manufactured on the basis of the local Artemis plant and supposedly strengthens not only the immune system but also offers protection against numerous viruses, fever and especially lung disease. After being distributed among school children, shipments were made to several other African countries. In India, the Ayurveda ministry announced shortly after the first Corona cases were made public that traditional medicine can help against Covid-19. Following criticism, the statement that it offered a cure was retracted and replaced by the suggestion that alternative medicine could strengthen the immune system. Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro issued a recommendation on Twitter to use a herbal mixture as a cure, while China’s president Xi Jinping claimed that 90% of all recovered Corona patients had received traditional Chinese medicine. Similar claims were made by Bolivia’s deputy minister for traditional medicine, Felix Quilla Muni, who recommended steaming with a mixture of eucalyptus and chamomile. In Indonesia, the demand rose for red ginger, resulting in a drastic increase in market prices, as in the case of curcuma powder in Sri Lanka, following which the government set an upper limit. Nepal’s prime minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli recommended steam therapy and drinking hot water.

5. This, incidentally, is an example of hermeneutical violence.