On Being Open: Michael A. Peters and the Quest for Intercultural Education through Dialogue
On Being Open: Michael A. Peters and the Quest for Intercultural Education through Dialogue

Author(s): Yusef Waghid
Subject(s): Philosophy, Education, Social development, Scientific Life, Inter-Ethnic Relations
Published by: Addleton Academic Publishers
Keywords: scientific life; Michael A. Peters; education; dialogue; intercultural education; educational philosophy;
Summary/Abstract: I consider myself to be privileged to contribute an essay to this Festschrift in honor of the life and works of Michael A. Peters for three reasons: I have known Michael for almost a decade and have always encountered him as a person with profound dignity and openness (Peters & Roberts, 2012) often unparalleled in the highly competitive and at times inhumane world of academic intellectualism; his relentless commitment and advocacy for ‘academic responsibility without conditions’ (Trifonas & Peters, 2005: 8) as is evident from his analytically admirable and pragmatically astute way in which he endeavors to address some of the problems that confront education in the modern world; and his passion for interculturalism, education and dialogue (Besley & Peters, 2012) as epistemological and practical responses to educational challenges that inspired him and Tina Besley to set up the Centre for Global Studies in Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand – a Centre I visited to do some work on intercultural education during the month of September 2012. As a tribute to Michael for his continuous commitment to educational philosophy and theory and, scholarship in general, I examine the concepts of openness, dialogue, and responsibility in relation to education – themes that feature strongly in his most recent works.

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