{"id":740,"date":"2019-06-07T14:50:44","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T14:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cross.education\/crosstalk\/2019\/06\/07\/statement-on-the-future-of-education\/"},"modified":"2019-06-19T07:07:35","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T07:07:35","slug":"statement-on-the-future-of-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/2019\/06\/07\/statement-on-the-future-of-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Statement on the Future of Education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the UNESCO Chair on Global Education at the Institute for Strategy of Education Development of the Russian Academy of Education<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve come to a realization. Effective education is simply, and exactly, this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To encourage and\ninspire people to communicate well; and through this process, enable them to\ndevelop their inner selves and their potential as it relates to both their\nsuccess and that of their communities.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we learn is not inconsequential, but to presume we can teach someone, anyone, to be good at anything in particular, is, I believe, misguided. People take themselves on those journeys and end up in places that are entirely of their own discovery, making, and determination. We can guide, suggest. Put coals on fire, and stoke it; but the direction the flames take, should there even be any, has nothing at all to do with us. We can stand by, watch, and, perhaps, become inspired ourselves by witnessing the potential people have within themselves. Our role, as teachers, is quite straightforward: to stoke the inspiration that will take people on journeys of their own determination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This realization rests at\nthe core of this, my little exploration into the future of education. It\u2019s a\nsimple idea, not reliant on technologies or trends or modes of pedagogical\nthought that are, on many occasions, flavours of the day. Indeed, it\u2019s an idea\nthat I believe has never changed. While the tools, science, social systems,\nmodes of thought, and resources that surround us today most certainly have\nevolved, we are ultimately the same vulnerable, sentient beings that have\nexisted for millennia. We share the same capacities, strengths, limitations,\nneeds, desires, hopes, and dreams as our distant ancestors who learned to control\nfire itself (something, incidentally, we\u2019ve yet to perfect). We learn what is\nrelevant and necessary for survival determined by the environments within which\nwe live. Beyond that, we learn best those things that catch our interest and\ninspire us to delve more deeply. We learn best in an effort to define who we\nare, to ourselves, to others, in ways we hope to be perceived, and in ways we\nyearn to be able to interact within our communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future of education,\nI believe, is no different than the past of education. While trends in\neducation will continue to come and go, trends are derivatives of a whole; they\ntend to be particular aspects, qualities, approaches, activities, and\nphilosophies elevated to lofty cultish heights. The truth is, when separated and\nformalized into \u201cnew approaches to learning,\u201d they lose both essence and\neffectiveness. Without delving too much into current trends and directions in\neducational thought, theory, and application, safe it to say that much emphasis\nis currently placed on the notion that our level of technological prowess\nenables approaches to learning that are somehow superior to \u201ctraditional\napproaches.\u201d Here, and pointedly, I disagree. First, the notion of a\ntraditional approach to education is a vague one that tends to fall apart with\ncloser inspection. And second, while our current state of technological prowess\nenables us so much further than humans have ever been enabled in the past,\nthose technologies are not capable in themselves to improve how and why we\nlearn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what, in my mind, is\nthe future of education. This is where I return to my opening words. The future\nof effective education lies in what effective education has always been: \u201cTo encourage and inspire people to\ncommunicate well; and through this process, enable them to develop their inner\nselves and their potential as it relates to both their success and that of\ntheir communities.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do we proceed? We\nforge communities of learning, something that has always been core to effective\nlearning. We create reasons for people to be together that hinge on shared\nchallenges. While our social and environmental surroundings define basic levels\nof understanding that we share and require to participate and survive within\nthem, we then and together discover how each of us carries some particular\nsolution to the larger questions we face as a whole. There is a place for\nlearning skills we apply in unison. And there is a place for our individual\nstrengths to benefit those communal needs. While society requires us to work in\nteams, in synchrony, according to requirements that apply equally to each of\nus, it also gains from individual understandings and approaches that can and do\nimprove the ability of the community to improve how it behaves as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all must learn to\nread, write, sing, count, and strategize. Beyond that, we all should be enabled\nby and engaged in the breadth and depth of the tools and capabilities now\navailable to us: incredible technologies, fantastic mobility, and seemingly\ninstantaneous access to information, anywhere, and anytime. Human society has\nchanged dramatically in the preceding three decades. We live in a world that I\nbelieve is experiencing a schism of a magnitude never before seen. On one side\nwe have the political orders, isolated communities corralled by power\nstructures and defined by invisible and arbitrary boundaries determined (more\nthan we\u2019d like to admit) through oppression within and beyond those boundaries.\nOn the other side we have an entire world of people all sharing the same needs,\nhopes, desires, and goals: to live, love, succeed, survive, and to feel\nincluded in community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a direct consequence\nof our incredible technologies, fantastic mobility, and seemingly instantaneous\naccess to information, traditional borders are rendered meaningless. Power\nstructures of the past should remain there. I have spent my professional career\nin education, and in particular international education. And through my three\ndecades in this field, I have concluded this: technology has brought together\npeople from around the world in different locations for different purposes and\nto accomplish goals that are relevant to all of us. Each of us today belongs to\nsocial circles where colleagues, mentors, friends, teachers, mothers, fathers,\nrelatives, brothers and sisters were, only a half century ago, bifurcated as\nallies or enemies. For the most part, we were led to believe that \u201cthey\u201d were\nnot \u201cus.\u201d The fact is, what we have discovered in recent decades, is, indeed,\nexactly the opposite. The past 30 years has provided all of us an emancipation\nof thought and being that changes everything\u2026 except for how we learn. That\nremains the same, and rests at the core of our future together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our incredible\ntechnologies, fantastic mobility, and seemingly instantaneous access to\ninformation will only improve, and dramatically so. As a global society we will\ncontinue to use those tools and technologies to bring us closer together in\ngreater diversity to face challenges of survival and social improvement that\nwill benefit all of us. We will continue to require education in fundamental\nskills and awareness. At the same time, the opportunities available to each of\nus as a consequence of our own unique talents and dispositions will increase\nexponentially as well, and as a direct result of the exponential increase in\nthe kinds of communities we are now capable of creating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greg Culos,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tokyo, June 7, 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the UNESCO Chair on Global Education at the Institute for Strategy of Education Development of the Russian … <\/p>\n

“Statement on the Future of Education” \u306e<\/span>\u7d9a\u304d\u3092\u8aad\u3080<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":754,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions\/754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackdoglogic.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}