Hans Furrer

Hans Furrer (born September 28, 1946 in Zurich ) is a Swiss special education teacher , adult educator and didactician .

Life

Furrer first made an apprenticeship as a reproduction photographer (1962–1966). After completing his Abitur in distance learning (1968), he studied mathematics, chemistry and physics at the University of Zurich and graduated in 1973 with the 2nd intermediate diploma (which today corresponds to a bachelor's degree).

In addition, he taught printing technology, repro photography and chemistry as a vocational college teacher at the School of Design. In this context, he attended a semester course in printing technology at the Dresden Art School in 1969.

He then trained as a primary school teacher at the Zürichberg teacher training college (now a college of education) and taught at the Auzelg primary school in Zurich-Schwamendingen from 1975 to 1980. From 1980 to 1986 he was a pedagogical assistant at the mathematics department of the Pestalozzianum Zurich, where he worked on the mathematics teaching materials for the primary school and led further training courses for the new teaching materials. During this time he also lectured as a lecturer for mathematics didactics at various teacher training institutions in Switzerland.

1981–1984 he studied education, special education and mathematics at the University of Zurich, in addition to the above-mentioned activities, and completed these studies with a licentiate. The title of his licentiate thesis was "The Interdependence of School and Economy in the Third World". He gained practical experience on this subject on the occasion of various research and work stays in Mali, Togo, Sudan, Eritrea and Kampuchea. In theory, he is based on the economic idea of ​​" self-reliance ", as it was represented in Tanzania in the 1960s and is still practiced in Eritrea today, and is based on the works of Samir Amin and his theory of auto-centered development .

1984–1986 he was a teacher at the special school in Zurich for the visually impaired and the blind. He received his doctorate in 1986 under Andreas Bächtold with a thesis in special education entitled “Approaches to a concept of disability in communicative action ”, in which he attempted to make the Habermas ' categories of “lifeworld” and “system” fruitful for a new version of the concept of disability.

1986–1989 he was a lecturer for educational science and didactics at the department for specialist and secondary teacher training at the University of Zurich. From 1989 he built up the adult education center for adults with cognitive impairments in Bern, today's 'Volkshochschule plus', which he headed until 1998 and at which he still runs adult education courses for cognitively impaired people on a wide variety of topics. In the 1990s he was a member of the extended executive committee of the international society 'Adult Education and Disability' and for several years was the editor of the magazine 'Adult Education and Disability'.

After already working as a tour guide in 1969/70 (especially in Bulgaria), he has been conducting educational and cultural trips on a regular basis since 1994.

From 1994 he was head of studies at the Bernese Seminar for Adult Education (BSE). There, together with colleagues from the BSE, he developed a competence and resource-oriented didactics for adult education, the so-called “ Bern model ”. From 2005 he taught at the “Academy for Adult Education” in Bern, Lucerne and Zurich the subjects of didactics, developmental psychology and socialization in the master’s course for “Adult & Professional Education”.

From 2004–2007 he studied oriental cultural studies (Islamic studies) at the University of Bern and wrote works on the colonial history of Libya , Tigrinya and the history of printing in Islam.

In addition, after his retirement (2011) he was and is active in a wide variety of areas of adult education, including vocational training, migration, special education and the support of competence portfolios.

Since 2012 he has been working periodically as a teacher trainer for the vocational school teachers at the "center for vocational training" in Yangon ( Myanmar ).

Political and social engagement

Since the early 1960s Furrer participated in the support movement for the Vietnamese liberation struggle and against the American warfare. (His anti-imperialist sentiments were directed not only against US, but also against Soviet imperialism. In 1970, on the occasion of the inauguration of a commemorative plaque for Lenin's 100th birthday in Primorsko, Bulgaria, he gave a speech in which he accused the Soviet Union of Having betrayed Lenin's legacy, which led to intervention by the Bulgarian secret service KDS.)

From 1968 he was active in the apprenticeship and student movement and the international solidarity movement. He was first a member of the Progressive Workers, Schoolchildren and Students (FASS) and the Progressive Student Union at the University of Zurich (FSZ) and in its successor organization Revolutionary Organization Zurich (RAZ). In the phase of party building that followed the student movement, he became a founding and leading member of the Marxist-Leninist “Communist Party of Switzerland (KPS - Red Flag)” and actively participated in international solidarity against the Vietnam War, Spanish and Greek fascism and against the xenophobic tendencies in Switzerland. He was a founding member and first president of the organization of Italian immigrants in Switzerland, “Federazione Italiano degli Lavoratori Emigrati” (FILE), a mass organization of the PCmlI. He was also a member of the “Zurich Indochina Committee” and later of the “Democratic Kampuchea Committee”.

All of his activities were closely observed by the federal police and on the occasion of the so-called Fichenskandal of 1990 he was informed that 2.7 kg of state security files existed about him and some of these were disclosed to him.

Furrer has also been a member of the “Swiss Support Committee for Eritrea” (SUKE) since the late 1970s and has traveled to Eritrea on various occasions and worked on projects there. In the 1980s he was the 'Secrétaire Pédagogique pour la cooperation pédagogique en Afrique' of the Swiss Teachers' Association and led projects in Mali , Togo and Zaïre and taught teacher training in Mali and Togo.

For a few years he taught mathematics with a small amount of work at the ' Vorlehre für Junge Migranten' in Bern. In his residential community of Boll-Vechigen, he was active in both the kindergarten and culture commission and also did voluntary work as a functionary of the Boll ice hockey club.

Since 2012 he has been working periodically as a teacher trainer for the vocational school teachers at the "center for vocational training" (cvt) in Yangon ( Myanmar ). The cvt is a private foundation that has introduced the dual vocational training system in five professions in Myanmar. Furrer conducts the Teachers Training for one month each year, i. H. the further training of the Myanmar vocational school teachers.

Since autumn 2015 he has been trying to implement various projects for dual vocational training in Eritrea in order to make a contribution to reducing migration from Eritrea.

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Even in his early, shorter political works, Furrer always took a decidedly anti-fascist and anti-imperialist standpoint. This attitude is also expressed in his special educational and adult educational writings. He always takes sides, implicitly or explicitly, for disadvantaged people and groups, be they people with disabilities, migrants or the peoples of the Third World.

As a convinced and yet critical Marxist, he starts out in most of his writings from the fundamental contradiction of today's society, the private appropriation of socially acquired wealth. Again and again he refers to the commodity chapter of Marx's ' capital ' and develops some of his educational and culture-critical works from the opposition of use value and exchange value . With recourse to the work of Alfred Sohn-Rethel , he makes this contradiction fruitful in his work on the development of the concept of number in children and in his criticism of the concept of quality. In various works he tries to reconcile the two categories of use and exchange value with the gender question and Habermas' duality of lifeworld and system. In the gender issue, he relies on the value split theory of Roswitha Scholz and Robert Kurz . In a somewhat simplified way, it can be said that for him quality, lifeworld and use value are more feminine, quantity, system and exchange value are more masculine categories. His criticism of the disintegration of education in postmodern society (e.g. through the Bologna reform) and of the total - yes, totalitarian - economization and standardization of all areas of life ( big data ) must also be seen in this larger picture . His engagement with critical theory, especially with Theodor W. Adorno , Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse, becomes visible. Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukács are also very important for Furrer's philosophical work . In his writings on educational policy, he refers to Ivan Illich and Paolo Freire , with whom he also attended several seminars.

In his adult educational and didactic writings he refers to the theory of activity and the work of the cultural-historical school ( Wygotski , Leontjew but also Christel Manske). The focus is on the concept of work. As a Marxist, he is of the opinion that humans differ from animals in their ability to work creatively. Therefore, people can only make education their own through self-determined action. In his 'Berner Modell' and related work, he tries to implement this understanding of people in a resource-oriented didactic.

In his latest work on inclusion in adult education, he goes back to Hegel and his theory of recognition and connects this with approaches by Judith Butler and Jessica Benjamin . In his critical examination of inclusion, he advocates the thesis that inclusion is not possible as long as we live in a performance society.

In his preoccupation with Hegel he is particularly interested in the early Bern period and Hegel's discussion of the French Revolution.

Fonts (selection)

• Basics of defense policy. In: Zeitdienst. 1969/39, p. 248ff.
• 20 years of the Cuban Revolution. In: Rote Fahne. 1973/4, p. 6.
• Greece: Popular Front against the fascist junta. In: Rote Fahne. 1973/8, p. 3.
• Are you allowed to laugh at Hitler? About Charlie Chaplin's 'Great Dictator'. In: Serving the people. 1974/2, p. 4f.
• L'Éducation à la République du Mali - et le rôle du maître. Publishing house SLV, Zurich 1982.
• Approaches to a concept of disability in communicative action. Central Office of the Student Union, Zurich 1986.
• The forgotten war in Eritrea. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 1986/269, p. 5.
• Blind people in contested Eritrea. In: Quarterly journal for curative education and its neighboring areas. 1987/3, pp. 492-495.
• Courage for Utopia - On Education AS Makarenkos. Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1988.
• Isn't genetic engineering rather genetic engineering? In: Pro Infirmis. 1988 / 5,6, pp. 46-51.
• Development of the school system in Eritrea. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 1988/64, p. 97.
• Piaget's theory of the development of the concept of number on the background of Hegelian logic. In: Switzerland. Journal of Psychology. 1988 / 2,3, pp. 121-128.
• The other Pestalozzi. In: Switzerland. Teachers newspaper. 1989/3, pp. 44/45.
• Humans in the age of their technical reproducibility. In: Quarterly journal for curative education and its neighboring areas. 1989/3, pp. 320-326.
• Antonio Gramsci - Note di una vita handicappata. In: Sostegno pedagogico. 1989/3, pp. 14-23.
• Which school for which Africa? In: Switzerland. Teachers newspaper. 1989/12, pp. 37-40.
• French Revolution educational programs. In: Switzerland. Teachers newspaper. 1989 / 14,15, pp. 12-14.
• The beginning and the end of my politics is education. In: Switzerland. Teachers newspaper. 1989 / 25,26, pp. 10-13.
• Disabled education or education for the disabled. In: Adult Education and Disability. 1990/1, pp. 8-13.
• The idiot. In: Switzerland. Curative educational review. 1990/3, pp. 60-62.
• The tree of knowledge is not like the tree of life. In: Bulletin of the professional association of early childhood educators. 1990/2
• Abortion and Infanticide or Quality of Life? In: European Journal of Special Needs Education. 1990/1, pp. 43-47.
• Some, of course, have to live below. In: P. Oberacker (Ed.): Looking through - tackling. Wittwer, Stuttgart 1990.
• The history of Eritrea - from Adulis to Asmara. In: E. Furrer-Kreski among others: Eritrea-Handbuch. Rio, Zurich 1990.
• Development model Eritrea - with 'self-reliance' to prosperity? In: E. Furrer-Kreski among others: Eritrea-Handbuch. Rio, Zurich 1990.
• Popular education and adult education on the threshold of modernity. Publishing house VKB, Bern 1990.
• O lê n'glouèlê yiè o lê n'glouèlê - the contradictions between cognitive and social development in mental deficiency and its impact on the adult education of mentally disabled. In: Reader of the International Symposium on 'Effective and Responsible Teaching' in Friborg (Switzerland) the 7th September 1990.
• Really beautiful - disability and the aesthetic category of the beautiful. In: Pro Infirmis. 1991/3, pp. 14-18.
• The sleep of reason gives birth to monsters - on genetic engineering and prenatal diagnostics. Edition SZH, Lucerne 1991.
• Mimesis or the hunt for concepts. In: Pro Infirmis. 1992/3, pp. 17-20.
• Socratic pragmatism or critical discourse. In: Ethics and Social Science. 1993/3, pp. 408-441.
• The periphery of the periphery. In: F. Albrecht, G. Weigt (Hrsg.): Disabled people on the edge of society. IKO, Frankfurt am Main 1993.
• with Daniela Dittli: friendship - love - sexuality. Edition SZH, Lucerne 1994.
• The angel of the disabled. In: Adult Education and Disability. 1995/1, pp. 15-18.
• Work and Education - Employment and Education Policy. In: DVV magazine. 1997/3, pp. 11-15.
• The periphery of the 'global village'. In: Adult Education and Disability. 1998/1, pp. 6-10.
• Resources - Skills - Performance: Skills Management for Adult Education Professionals. hep Verlag, Lucerne 2000.
• Check competencies that you have developed yourself. In: St. Dietrich (Ed.): Self-directed learning. DIE, Frankfurt am Main 2001.
• Quelques pensées critique sur la notion et la pratique de la validation. ARRA, Lausanne 2001.
• Against the globalization of humans. In: Chr. Mürner: (Ed.): The improvement of people - From curative education to human genetics. Edition SZH, Lucerne 2002.
• Political opportunity or identity-psychological necessity? Recognition and validation of competencies. In: Fundamentals of Continuing Education. 2005/2, pp. 37-40.
• The Bern model - an instrument for competence-oriented didactics. hep Verlag, Bern 2009.
• Quality and quantity - not everything that matters, matters. In: R. Arnold, H. Furrer: Quality - A Challenge for Adult Education. hep Verlag, Bern 2010.
• Is education for the disabled possible? In: T. Erzmann, G. Feuser (Ed.): I feel like a bird that flies out of its nest. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011.
• Didactic and methodological considerations on inclusion in adult education. In: K.-E. Ackermann (ed.): Approaches to inclusion. Bertelsmann, Bielefeld 2013.