( A three-minute read)

In the not so distant future, it will not be the aims of education to be the transmission of knowledge but the fostering of inquiry.

All human societies, past and present, have had a vested interest in education; children are born illiterate and innumerate, and ignorant of the norms and cultural achievements of the community or society into which they have been thrust.

We all know that education serves as a social-sorting mechanism but this is coming to an end with technology. The great social importance of education is underscored by the fact that when a society is shaken by a crisis, this often is taken as a sign of educational breakdown; education and educators become scapegoats.

There seems little point in education the children of the today with yesterdays knowledge if they are void of creativity. The passive language of seeing, which has shaped our discourse down to the present will no longer apply.

The question of what knowledge will be, and what skills will be needed ought to be—part of the domain of philosophy of the curriculum of the future.

What are the basic aims and ideals of the educational enterprise?

What ought educators try to accomplish?

I suppose the best education will equip individuals with the skills and substantive knowledge that allows them to define and to pursue their own goals, and also allows them to participate in the life of their community as full-fledged, autonomous citizens.

The world is going to need critical thinkers, not the present day state-provided brainwashing students.

Plato’s starting point is that the organization of society depends ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. Only those who have rightly trained minds will be able to recognize the end.

Granted each individual is an organism situated in a biological and social environment in which problems were constantly emerging, forcing the individual to reflect, act, and learn but this is also changing and perhaps Plato’s theory “the spectator theory of knowledge” is going to come true.

In schools, those under instruction are too customarily looked upon as acquiring knowledge as theoretical spectators, minds which appropriate knowledge by a direct energy of intellect. The very word pupil has almost come to mean one who is engaged not in having fruitful experiences but in absorbing knowledge directly.

Something which is called mind or consciousness is severed from the physical organs of activity.

However, in the future, as robots and automation sweep the global workforce each student although an individual will blaze his or her unique trail of growth on the internet.

This is already happening with many University offering online courses.

A teacher will have the task of guiding and facilitating this growth, without imposing a fixed end upon the process.

Dewey sometimes uses the term “curriculum” to mean “the funded wisdom of the human race”, the point is that over the course of human history an enormous stock of knowledge and skills has accumulated and the teacher has the task of helping the student to make contact with this repertoire—but helping by facilitating rather than by imposing.

As technology removes the need for knowledge students coming out of University with degrees in Law, Medicine etc will not be needed.

Virtual learning, digitization, and augmented reality will make obsolete our old definitions of a classroom in 2020.

Before each of us is imprisoned in a world of our own making we should move creativity to the top of the education premise.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.