Once accessibility is guaranteed and every student is free to make their own choices, quality of education becomes the second key condition. Only education of a high standard can ensure that all the values and objectives of education described above are properly and fully realised. Good education produces diverse individuals, citizens and ideas, rather than a uniform mass. It develops students and the knowledge transferred is up to date and relevant. Education must enable students to find and fulfil their role in society. Good education makes students aware of their own responsibility and ensures that they take it. In this way, it also helps to turn students into critical citizens. At the same time, good education ensures that these critical students are connected to society and able to come up with creative solutions to social problems. Ultimately, good education provides space and freedom for the input and wishes of the individual.
The quality of education ultimately forms the basis of every learning process. It is important to have good teachers with good teaching skills who are given the professional space to practise their profession. Teachers who are not held back by managers with no understanding of education, but who can shape education together with their fellow teachers. In addition, good and comprehensive personal feedback is crucial. Teachers must be given the time and space to help students personally with support that suits the individual student.
The LSVb also attaches importance to small-scale education, both in terms of group size and educational institutions in general. Good education provides space for good discussions between students and between students and teachers based on trust. There is also room for critical self-reflection within an institution.
Different perspectives
Because education should lead to self-development, it is necessary for students to be presented with different points of view. Whether they want to understand a subject well or develop themselves in a more abstract, academic sense, students must be exposed to multiple perspectives and visions on theory and everyday practice so that they can develop themselves as broadly as possible.
The same applies to the development of critical thinking skills. Students must be accustomed to seeing multiple perspectives on a subject and then being able to make a reasoned choice. Only when students are practised in this will they develop critical thinking skills. In addition, education highlights multiple worldviews and provides space to look at the content of one’s own studies in other ways.
Different perspectives are also important for social emancipation. Education should introduce students to multiple perspectives, cultures and worldviews. Cultivating understanding and awareness of one’s own worldview and how it influences thinking and behaviour is of great value and should be part of every student’s education. In addition to their own worldview, education also confronts students with other worldviews and teaches them how to deal with them. All cultures and backgrounds are valued equally, enabling education to have an emancipatory effect.