СЪЗНАТЕЛНО ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ: ПРЕДИЗВИКАТЕЛСТВА И ПЕРСПЕКТИВИ ПРЕД ОБУЧЕНИЕТО ПО ИЗТОЧНИ ЕЗИЦИ И КУЛТУРИ
CONSCIOUS EDUCATION: THE CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES OF TEACHING EASTERN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Summary/Abstract: The 21st century debate on the role of humanities in the contemporary world and the necessity to teach a wide range of disciplines (among which literature, culture, aesthetics, philosophy and others) has caused serious tension among humanity scholars. In many developed countries the presence of humanities in the educational priorites has shrinked substantially. In the present paper I will discuss the interconnection and interdependence of language and culture education with concrete examples from the Bulgarian school of Eastern Studies in order to rethink Aristotle’s legacy – “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all”. The current paper introduces the concept of “conscious education” as a key factor for the development of 21st century foreign language and culture education. Conscious education is based on an analysis of the needs and aims and strives to build mutual awareness within all parties involved in the education process to make learners adaptive and adequate to the surrounding environment. The theories of A. Maslow, Ch. Darwin, M. Gladwell, K. Ishikawa are brought together and through analysis of the current state of the Japanese Studies in Bulgaria, I try to raise important questions about the role of foreign language education in 21st century. I contribute to the dispute by reporting results from current projects conducted by the Japanese Studies at Sofia University, which I believe relate to a much wider audience, involved in the education of young people nowadays.

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