In the EPI•STEM PODCAST Episode 15, co-hosts Geraldine Simmie PhD and Michelle Starr PhD discuss the positioning of education at a crossroads once again in light of the fast changing global economic landscape brought about by the US President Donal Trump. The imposition of trade tariffs between nation states brings an abrupt end to the last twenty years or more of free trade and free movement of people, goods and services across the globe.

The central question Geraldine and Michelle engage with here is why a change to the economy of this substantive and unforeseen scale will inevitably result in changes to the education system in nation states and across continents and to the perceived purposes of education.

The political scientist Hannah Arendt reminds us in her book Totalitarianism that when there is a crisis in the economy this will inevitably result in policy changes to the education system. Education is never innocent and the socio-political order of the day is always remade through the education system.

The European Commission is currently researching how to reframe an equitable and fair green and digital transition in a futuristic Europe, the importance of care and justice for society and the environment. Geraldine is the expert researcher from Ireland on this European research study. 

While the global world braces itself for tariff changes, the question is whether or not the political powers are socially constructing a future of neo-conservatism and authoritarianism or a future of deeper democracy, where the common good of society and the environment prevail. This in-between space gives us time to reflect, rethink and to remind ourselves that the etymology of ‘edu-cat-ion’ is to ‘lead out’ human potential with ‘care’.

The musical selection today is an original song played on acoustic guitar by Ayyaz Mehmood, a composer and final year student in Performing Arts and World Music in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. Ayyaz is singing his own composition, a bilingual love song in Urdu and English called ‘Widhu’.