Chapter 2: The Policy Context: Challenging the Crisis of Contemporary Culture and Popularism with ABCDE to Achieve SDG 4

In the first chapter, I provided a road map for the book and in this chapter, I provide a policy context for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) generally. The policy context is one of a crisis of contemporary culture and popularism. War and violence indicated for Dewey a breakdown of democratic deliberation. Nation states were at war early in the last century, and in our time we are seeing a rise in nationalism, and at the same time the breakdown of societies that have become rife with terrorism and social chaos, Violence, Uncertainty, Chaos and Ambiguity (VUCA) (Thurman, 1991). In the United States, confederate flags are flying that symbolise a commitment to a history of racialised slavery. De Gruy identifies that terrible damage was done to slaves brought to America from Africa. Psychological warfare was conducted to break their wills in an attempt to replace slaves' critical minds. Asking questions, being critical and solving problems underpins self-efficacy and successful future planning with missing information (Taysum, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c) that Dweck (2012) identifies can be locked in with a fixed mindset of inferiority (Dweck, 2012).