In many respects the future of education is uncertain, but one thing is certain: we must move toward a new paradigm of teaching, because the current educational model does not respond to the needs of the new generations or to the principles of an equitable social contract.
According to the book “Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education,” education worldwide is a tacit social agreement that has historically defined what is taught, to whom, and for what purpose. We must make changes at the root that force us to truly question what objectives we are pursuing with education and whom it is benefiting or harming.
One of the most serious problems of the current educational context worldwide is that knowledge and its structures continue to answer to old ways of knowing, typical of the 20th century and wholly inadequate for the changes we are facing. We have to consider that society and the planet itself are at significant risk.
If we do not begin to collaborate hand in hand to build a new, fairer social contract that serves as the basis for the future of education, the landscape we face will be even more plagued by inequalities and a lack of basic resources. According to UNESCO, the new social contract for the education of the future must rest on the principles of inclusion, equity, cooperation, solidarity, collective responsibility and interconnection, and actively seek a fairer, more peaceful, more sustainable and more innovative society. We share the vision, and we are committed to working substantially on the issue.
It should be borne in mind that these four ideal characteristics are key, since they aim to solve problems directly tied to economic inequalities, the weakening of democracies, precarious labor, resource exploitation that exceeds the planet's capacities, and the digital divide that means only a few innovate, and generally in the service of private interests.
Undoubtedly, adopting disruptive new pedagogical approaches in schools and educational institutions in general is a daunting challenge, but, at the same time, it is precisely in educational organizations that the changes that lay the foundations for the future of education must begin to take shape.
That is also why, for this space, we adopt the principles recommended by UNESCO:
Rethinking the learning space:
Children and young people are learning all the time, not only while they are in classrooms or during school hours; in fact they cannot help it, because their brains are wired that way, hungry for new experiences and associations.
Our conception of the learning space has to go a step beyond physical settings, textbooks and theoretical knowledge. We must embrace all the opportunities that everyday life, first-hand experience, community challenges and the virtual world, among others, offer for teaching. Put another way, education can no longer be an isolated place bounded by hierarchical relationships, but must become an omnipresent state of mind, guided by collaboration and the mutual construction of shared knowledge. It is worth stressing that technology is a tool to support learning, but it cannot replace it.
Aligning learning with the search for solutions to real problems:
If we cannot teach a student the practical application of knowing how to solve a quadratic equation, even if they memorize the formula, they are not really learning anything. A series of isolated mathematical steps may lodge in their short-term memory long enough to pass the exam, but without networks of association with tangible experience it will end up disappearing. It is not that the body of basic disciplinary knowledge is unimportant; it is that
we must first understand what these are for and in the service of which problems
they can be put to work in an interdisciplinary way; in this manner, research and the drive to
learn how to learn emerge naturally.
Giving social and emotional learning the same importance as intellectual learning:
For centuries, emotion has been relegated to a secondary, nonexistent or even undesirable role in education. Today we know that separating the cognitive from the emotional is not only impossible, but that such attempts can lead to a dangerous split in our morality, our ethics and our actions. Students need to develop social skills that include compassion, empathy, social responsibility, solidarity and cooperation; it is also essential that they strengthen other soft skills such as communication, leadership and
self-management.
Assessing from the premise of “learning to learn”:
The goal of assessment must be to ensure that students know how to investigate, apply, critique and produce knowledge in line with their stage of maturity and throughout their lives. Assessment must stop being a system for ranking the more and the less capable and must become a compass for teachers to guide students toward collaborative projects. To help them strengthen general cognitive and socioemotional skills, which they can then put to work on specific problems.