The Future of Education
Education is in a process of constant change, as it should be, the underlying question being, to what extent are our current schooling resources, including technology, helping or obstructing a better quality of learning? We live in a world where shocks like pandemics and extreme weather events owing to climate change, social unrest and political polarisation are expected to be more frequent, affecting more and more people. Not to mention the great challenges AI and the like are presenting to education. If power became better distributed allowing more inclusive co-creation in schools and by all stakeholders, instead of just trying to alter how we learn, we might stand a chance.
In the true sense, education does not involve a particular ideology, except that of producing an integrated individual, but the march of technology is far from neutral, and it raises many issues. Alienation through limited human interaction, for example, is not new to us, though some research now maintains that it is less a product of technology than some other factors, and that focusing on social media can build up skills including learning rather than hinder it. At the same time, easy access to unsubstantiated information makes us move away from empirically proven facts. And there's the rise of costs of technology whose impact on students has yet to be analysed.
Modernising and extending but at the same time personalising schooling would be more or less what we currently want in education. This basically means ensuring content and spaces that are largely standardised across the system, primarily school-based, including digital delivery and homework focused on challenging students to achieve as much as they can. Those who experience difficulties with a subject or interdisciplinary project should get the chance to practise more until they reach the required level, which does not necessarily imply excessive testing or evaluation procedures.
However, to give education a more individual approach in the future, priority might be given to home schooling. A shared outlook is that it gives more physical and emotional freedom as well as fostering relationships at home. An additional perk is that you are able to study when you want and for as long as you want, and perhaps even what you want, although, in my opinion, the latter is a highly debatable feature. As is the belief that succumbing to other students' influences and power can be removed from this type of learning, since nowadays it is mostly exercised online anyway.
In time, with the assistance of technology, the way knowledge is passed on will undergo a significant shift towards online platforms, but always keeping quality over quantity in mind. Learning will incorporate multiple perspectives and virtual reality, as long as it can help us control and not lose sight of the processes and outcomes in real life. These platforms will give students an opportunity to learn how to negotiate and exchange ideas online while continually checking comprehension and helping students to progress. Finally, distance learning can enable you to mix studying and family duties successfully and enter the labour market sooner.
To conclude, when students were asked if schools could disappear altogether, they replied that whatever happened, there would still be a vital role for school tutors to track, support, engage and empathise, although learning itself would be more autonomous with increasingly high-quality content and extra use of AI pedagogical tools, which could lead to budget cuts in schools. This development is not hard to fathom since we have already started integrating our lives into our smartphones, watches and digital personal assistants. They did express concern as to whether there will even be a world to live in due to the continuous and detrimental chase after growth.