Abstract

This is a dialogue or conversation between Michael Baker (MB) and Michael A. Peters (MP) on the concept of modernity and its significance for educational theory. The dialogue took place originally as a conversation about a symposium on modernity held at the American Educational Studies Association meeting 2010. It was later developed for publication in this form. MB: I am working on initiating a dialogue on modernity and modern education along with articulating a post-Eurocentric or post-Occidental narrative of modernity developed from the modern/colonial world system perspective. It seems to me that modernity and modern education are still largely self-understood from within the modern Eurocentric intellectual tradition (Bhambra, 2009). Modernity constitutes a civilizational-educational framework for knowing, teaching, and learning about the world as modern. The modern/colonial world system perspective is a Latin American critique of modernity