UNESCO’s “Futures of Education: Learning to Become”

“It is hopeful that education is the engine of social change for students, and for teachers, appreciation of human diversity is the foundation of education.”

The times we are living through the COVID-19 pandemic is full of uncertainty, complexity, and precariousness. Without a doubt, this impels us to rethink our future as humanity and our planet’s care. With a view to 2050, UNESCO proclaims that “knowledge and learning are the biggest renewable resources to help humanity respond to challenges and develop alternatives.” If before the 2019 pandemic, education was already a mandatory discussion, it is a duty and requirement to exercise a citizen right during and after the pandemic. Faced with this situation, Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), Quality Education, is being rethought. Thus, UNESCO has created an initiative called Futures of Education: Learning to Become to re-signify the roles of knowledge, learning, and education for their contribution to the global common good.

This project intends to generate a global debate on how knowledge and learning can shape the future of humanity and the planet and establish a plan for dialogue and action on educational policies on multiple levels. The results of this exercise will be published in the last trimester of this year (UNESCO, 2019).

“Both students and teachers expressed ideas generated from their aspirations, desires, dreams, and hopes of today’s education to form tomorrow.”

At Prepa Tec Eugenio Garza Sada, we join this initiative to hear the teachers’ and students’ voices. In December 2020, we discussed the collective possibilities we observe and what we desire to become as humanity. We opened the local dialogue and joined the international dialogue by organizing consultations using voluntary focus groups.

The future of education by 2050

We organized three different dialogues: two with teachers and one with students. We followed the format provided by UNESCO, with three guiding questions to asked. All three one-hour sessions were via Zoom. In total, 28 people discussed the future of education. The teachers’ group consisted of 11 women and six men from different academic departments, mainly Social and Humanities. The group of high school students, ages 16 to 18, comprising eight women and three men in the third and fifth semesters of their curricula. In this article, I share the most outstanding responses to the questions from each focus group.

Question # 1: When you think about 2050, what concerns you the most? What gives you the most hope? 

The students worried about corruption, social and economic inequality, inaccessibility, and low quality of education. They displayed agitated concern, almost fear, about pollution, the environment, and climate change. Some of the most repeated concepts were technology, and knowledge gap, and inequality.

The teachers indicated concern for the inaccessibility of education, misinformation, and mismanagement of technology, ideological polarization, and extremes, the recent isolation due to the pandemic; little evolution in educational assessment; bad policy management, social gaps, and anti-values. One sentence that resounded loudly was, “I believe that education is making the inequality gap even bigger.”

As for hope, both groups presented very different ideas. Students considered technology as hopeful for health and education. However, they reflected a sharp awareness that its mismanagement will continue to widen gaps, favoring privileged sectors and fostering marginalization, inequality, misinformation, and mental laziness. A noteworthy point about the students’ responses is that they are very committed to themselves and their responsibility as citizens: “Change is not in others, but in ourselves: the responsibility for change is everyone’s.” “It gives me hope to believe that we are the ones who are going to change the future. We are a new generation that will drive change, which past generations did not think of doing.”

The professors repeatedly commented that they found hope in their observations of more conscious, interested, and committed student generations to local and global citizenship. The teachers commented that they observed a more intrapersonal education centered on personal needs, which generates hope about how a person takes care of himself.

Both students and teachers argued that gaps and inequalities caused by different economic, educational, and ideological factors are a present and future concern. There was a big difference in how they viewed hope, as teachers observed hope in the future generations, and the young generations put their hope in the well-managed use of technology.  

Question # 2: Considering the visions for 2050, what should be the collective goals of education by 2050? 

Coincidentally, both groups spoke of four characteristics that should be collective concepts: Inclusion, the Person, the Present, and the Democratization of Knowledge.

1. Inclusive Education

   One goal should be to combat the differences that lead to educational lag and gaps, focusing on everyone (inclusivity) and considering each person’s abilities. One point of the encounter was that inclusion should come from personalizing education to adapt it to particular interests: “There are students who believe that they are not understood, and their talent is not seen because individual talents are not potentialized.” They spoke of an education where everyone counts and they are everyone.

2. Education Focused on the Person

   Comments included that a goal should be to promote self-confidence and security, providing tools for knowing each other, emphasizing happiness and building life purpose, focusing on mental and emotional health, forging character, and promoting responsible citizenship. The students talked about the person and the citizen; for them, “person-focused” means removing the taboos of sex education, challenging them with critical thinking, training in human rights, and recognizing human dignity. Comments included: “The development of empathy is super important so that it is understood that we are all society,” “The collective goal should be promoting values that a human being must have to understand the spectrum of human dignity,” “Education should be a perfect fit. “

3. Education for the Present

   Both groups addressed the “whys” and “for what” underlying what is taught. They commented that education should be practical, focusing on real and complex problems currently faced by students. They envision a citizenship-centered education based on real challenges and problems, where students fully understand why and what is learned.

4. Democratization of Knowledge

   Both groups recognized that not all disciplines have the same value and that this is why internships are favored more than others. Valuing all the subjects equally was a typical comment. Adding to the collective objectives mentioned above, they noted that valuing equally is very different from evaluating everyone the same way: “There is too much diversity to want to standardize us all.”

Question # 3: In the future, how should “what we learn, how we learn, and where we learn” change? 

The responses were entirely in agreement, and the points about the how and where of learning were further addressed.

• About where one learns

The students and professors commented that the school should not be the only place for learning. Both proposed open spaces without classrooms, where learning occurs at a personalized pace, peer learning, and learning based on projects and challenges. They encouraged error as a form of knowledge and suggested changing the teacher’s role to that of an “arbitrator” or project advisor: “I would love it to be more experiential.”

•  About how one learns

  Both groups emphatically proposed learning fundamental skills such as autonomy, self-management, self-knowledge, self-motivation, and self-discovery. Students and professors proposed basic questions: “What do you want to do?”, “You have to put education in the hands of the one who is learning,” “What do you like to learn?”, “What do you want to know?”, “What do you want to discover from the world?”.

A strong agreement was about assessment: “How learning is valued and evaluated must be changed,” “Grades make you comparable, and that is not correct,” “A numerical assessment is not who you are. A number does not determine what you are capable of.” At this point, the idea of valuing all subjects equally and avoiding quantifying a person through exams resumed. Both groups favored involving and making families accountable in education, including them in the dialogue and projects of value and citizenship.

Reflection 

The experience of the focus groups was very enriching. Both students and teachers expressed ideas generated from their aspirations, desires, dreams, and hopes of today’s education to form tomorrow. This exercise showed direct and robust commitment by the students and teachers involved. Through open dialogue, they contribute to democracy in education. It is a way of listening to each other from the most human part. The responses from both groups showed that we must talk about collective goals in our futures, in which we are all represented. We must become citizens respectful of human dignity to have a more inclusive world. It is hopeful to note that education is the engine of social change for students, and for teachers, appreciation of human diversity is the foundation of education.

About the author

Jessica Jasso (jessicajasso@tec.mx) holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Aesthetics. She is currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in Inclusive Education. She is a Professor of Literature and Research in the International Baccalaureate program at PrepaTec.

References

UNESCO (2019). Los futuros de la educación: aprender a convertirse. https://es.unesco.org/futuresofeducation/la-iniciativa

Edited by Rubí Román (rubi.roman@tec.mx) – Observatory of Educational Innovation.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Jessica Cristina Jasso Ayala

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0