Fixing the Future: Public Discourse on the Implementation of Education Standards in Austria

Author(s):  
Bernadette Hörmann
Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572199148
Author(s):  
Anthony Costello

On the 25 March 2017, leaders of the EU27 and European Union (EU) institutions ratified the Rome Declaration. They committed to invite citizens to discuss Europe’s future and to provide recommendations that would facilitate their decision-makers in shaping their national positions on Europe. In response, citizens’ dialogues on the future of Europe were instituted across the Union to facilitate public participation in shaping Europe. This paper explores Ireland’s set of dialogues which took place during 2018. Although event organisers in Ireland applied a relatively atypical and more systematic and participatory approach to their dialogues, evidence suggests that Irelands’ dialogues were reminiscent of a public relations exercise which showcased the country’s commitment to incorporating citizens into the debate on Europe while avoiding a deliberative design which could have strengthened the quality of public discourse and the quality of public recommendations. Due to an absence of elite political will for a deliberative process, as well as structural weaknesses in design, participants’ recommendations lacked any clear and prescriptive direction which could shape Ireland’s national position on the future of Europe in any constructive or meaningful way.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wyatt Wells

AbstractIn the 1890s, questions about whether to base the American currency upon gold or silver dominated public discourse and eventually forced a realignment of the political parties. The matter often confuses modern observers, who have trouble understanding how such a technically complex—even arcane—issue could arouse such passions. The fact that no major nation currently backs its currency with precious metal creates the suspicion that the issue was a “red herring” that distracted from matters of far greater importance. Yet the rhetoric surrounding the “Battle of the Standards” indicates that the more sophisticated advocates of both sides understood that, in the financial context of the 1890s, the contest between gold and silver not only had important economic implications but would substantially affect the future development of the United States.


Border Deaths ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Dearden ◽  
Tamara Last ◽  
Craig Spencer

Statistics on border deaths have permeated public discourse over the last few years in Europe, in part due to the increased effort by academics, journalists, NGOs and international organizations to document these deaths. For researchers and policy makers, these quantitative data help indicate the severity of the phenomenon of people dying while trying to reach other countries in an irregularized manner. Such figures can also raise awareness and concern within the general public. This chapter is organized around the main challenges associated with quantitative border deaths data collection and dissemination. The chapter suggests strategies for improvement of the current context as well as directions for research and work on border deaths in the future.


2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Miller

Abstract Although contemporary events have made it appear that there is widespread support in Canada for history as a discipline, the reality is otherwise. Many individuals, interest groups, and even institutions make considerable use of historical arguments in public debate to advance their causes, it is true. However, it is almost invariably the case that these advocates making historical arguments are not historians. This painful reality was brought home to the historical profession in 1996-97 by such events as the release of the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and the debates over public policy issues such as copyright reform and a protocol for research involving humans. It is essential to the future of the discipline and of organisations such as CHAJSHC that historians reassert their role in the processes of researching, interpeting, and utilizing history in public discourse and academic arenas.


Author(s):  
Robert B. Archibald ◽  
David H. Feldman

This book evaluates the threats—real and perceived—that American colleges and universities must confront over the next thirty years. Those threats include rising costs endemic to personal services like higher education, growing income inequality in the United States that affects how much families can pay, demographic changes that will affect demand, and labor market changes that could affect the value of a degree. The book also evaluates changing patterns of state and federal support for higher education, and new digital technologies rippling through the entire economy. Although there will be great challenges ahead for America’s complex mix of colleges and universities, this book’s analysis is an antidote to the language of crisis that dominates contemporary public discourse. The bundle of services that four-year colleges and universities provide likely will retain their value for the traditional age range of college students. The division between in-person education for most younger students and online coursework for older and returning students appears quite stable. This book provides a view that is less pessimistic about the present, but more worried about the future. The diverse American system of four-year institutions is resilient and adaptable. But the threats this book identifies will weigh most heavily on the schools that disproportionately serve America’s most at-risk students. The future could cement in place a bifurcated higher education system, one for the children of privilege and great potential and one for the riskier social investment in the children of disadvantage.


Plaridel ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orville Tatcho

Televised political ads are powerful instruments of campaign communication because they are dominant and ubiquitous repositories of narratives by candidates and their strategists. Using Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm and Robert Rowland’s narrative approach, this study looks into the use of narratives in 127 political TV ads in the 2016 and 2019 national elections. The discussion is divided into two major sections. First, the study uncovers dominant, emerging, and missing narratives in the TV ads and reflects on what these narratives reveal about Philippine political culture. Second, through a critique of these existing narratives, this study raises the challenge of reimagining and creating ads that foster critical public discourse. To this end, the paper recommends alternative topics, subjects, and strategies to improve TV ads in the future while recognizing the medium’s constraints such as length and costs.


Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 68-84
Author(s):  
Mat Paskins

This chapter intervenes in critical debates about the recording and documenting of histories of the future by critiquing, and offering an alternative approach to, current practices. It argues that many histories of the future rely on an extremely selective range of empirical sources which secure particular versions of, and narratives about, the future. Instead, this chapter identifies and examines the multifarious form of the periodical as a vital source material for reconstructing the past. Juxtaposing numerous techniques of representing the future, the periodical enables different ways of imagining, predicting, and resisting possible futures to collide against and compete with each other in a variety of rapidly shifting contexts. Reading the diversity of modes for presenting futures in periodicals can help us to consider how different representations of the future, with a wide range of temporalities, are woven into one another within ordinary public discourse.


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