Opening Address by prof. Anna Odrowaz-Coates at ESA RN10/IKA children rights congress скачать в хорошем качестве

Opening Address by prof. Anna Odrowaz-Coates at ESA RN10/IKA children rights congress

Children's and Youth Perspectives: Voices in Their Own Narratives and Socio-Educational Contexts (5.02.2026). Programme: https://ika.today/wp-content/uploads/... ... "This congress embodies something extraordinary: the collaboration between the International Korczak Association and the European Sociological Association’s Research Network on the Sociology of Education. It is a rare and powerful union of perspectives. Here, sociology meets pedagogy. Theory meets practice. Data meets empathy. Analysis meets human vulnerability and emotion elements too often stripped away in laboratories and in increasingly digitalized forms of power. And yet, these are precisely the foundations of what makes us human. This collaboration reminds us that education is not only a technical process. It is a moral and emotional act. It is about shaping citizens, not consumers. It is about nurturing dignity, not obedience. And it is about cultivating freedom grounded in truth and shared responsibility. We are living in times that echo, unsettlingly, the Europe of a century ago. Then, too, disease, hatred, competition for resources, disinformation, and fear paved the road to catastrophe. Today, war has returned to our continent, and cognitive conflict has become a daily reality. The battlefields are no longer only geographical; they are cognitive. They exist in our information ecosystems, in social media, in artificial intelligence, in propaganda and fake news that erode trust and polarize communities without a single border being crossed. Traditional defences such as armies, borders, intelligence systems cannot protect us from attacks on belief, perception, and meaning. What is under threat today is the human mind. That is why I speak of a Protective Cognitive Shield: not a wall of exclusion, but a shared educational infrastructure of critical thinking, empathy, civic courage, and democratic resilience. And this shield cannot be built without children and youth. They are not passive recipients of knowledge; they are epistemic agents, co-creators of truth, and guardians of our future. Our societies in Central and Eastern Europe still carry the scars of war and authoritarianism. Low social trust, fear of otherness, and intergenerational trauma did not disappear with the fall of the Iron Curtain. Research even shows that trauma can be transmitted across generations, not only through stories and silence, but biologically. And yet, Poland, Ukraine, and so many others show extraordinary resilience and determination. They remind us that history does not only wound, it also teaches. Janusz Korczak understood this profoundly. Physician, educator, philosopher, and above all, defender of children’s dignity, he offered us a pedagogy rooted in respect, responsibility, and democratic participation. Long before children’s rights were codified, he practiced them. He showed us that courage can be learned. That hope can be cultivated. That freedom begins when a child is trusted. Korczak’s pedagogy was not sentimental. It was demanding. It asked adults to step down from absolute authority and step into shared responsibility. It asked children to grow into agency, accountability, and care for others. In today’s era of cognitive conflict, his work offers us not nostalgia, but a blueprint. Education, and education alone, still gives us a chance to prevent history from repeating itself. But how can we succeed when spending on education and science is shrinking? When teachers’ social status is degrading? When our intellectual elites were once wiped out by war and totalitarianism, depleting not only our institutions but our collective confidence? Strong societies invest in education because education is national security. Education is democratic defence. Education is the rebuilding of our intellectual and moral capital. Critical thinking is no longer optional. It is survival. If we want a protective cognitive shield, we must create coordinated, multi-level educational initiatives that cross borders, disciplines, and traditions. We must see education not as transmission of facts, but as a participatory process in which children and youth co-create knowledge, meaning, and responsibility. This is the second layer of defense: strengthening democracy from the inside out. And for this to succeed, we must truly see and truly hear children and young people. Not symbolically. Not occasionally. But structurally. We must offer them real spaces of participation, real co-agency, real co-creativity, and real co-responsibility. Without this, our protective shield remains incomplete."