(Ten-minute read)

 

We don’t know is the true answer.

So far, the so-called “education” has not been able to catch up with this fourth industrial revolution.

The irrelevance of the curriculum is becoming more and more evident.

Being able to Google is no substitute for true understanding.

What learning in the 21st century should look like is open to interpretation—and controversy.

It’s no longer enough to “know things.” It’s even more important to stay curious about finding out things.

Because once the technologies we are creating starts to create itself and really get going most of what they are learning today will be obsolete.

The future of life will be decided by Algorithms both personal and otherwise not to gain insight into timeless dilemmas and the human condition. They will reinvent themselves again and again so that the basic structure of life will no longer be accumulating information.

If you don’t except their decisions you will be a “clueless fossil ” as Yuval Noah Harari observes in this book of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century a must-read.

Is this true?

Developing skills will not be required in a world where all decision making is done for you from data collected and analyzed.

All they will need is to have the skills to find it and drive their own education.

Gone are the days of text-heavy textbooks and outdated subjects, visualisation will be the new educator.

Technology will have taken over every aspect of their daily lives so who am I will be the most pressing subject to learn because if you are not aware you will be left behind.

Technology won’t be bad if you know what you want. Another word it must serve you not you it.

To be able to think creatively and critically.

Because as machine learning, profit-seeking algorithms and biotechnology/engineering /nanotechnology all become ever more powerful they will need to know what they are and who there are, and what they want.

So education should include a greater focus on holistic wellbeing to help young people counteract mental health issues and deal with negativity.

Teachers must have the ability to move away from being the dispenser of information to someone who can guide them and prepare them for their future.

Self-awareness and interpersonal relationships.

You might think that all this is hogwash and indeed it will be if algorithms take control.

It remains true that skill isn’t simply one for the 21st century – it spans the ages, from the ancient Greeks to the present.

Without a deeper understanding of the history that brought them to where we are today, algorithms will take control.

So there may be some inherent folly in technological solutionism so readily embraced in our time.

Because the Internet apart from Tweets, Facebook, or YouTube is releasing intellectual energy that comes from our latent desires as human beings to have a voice, to create, and to participate – Wikipedia creates knowledge.

Giving what is coming and what we already know about our Planet and the Universe the next generation will need to see beyond money if there lives life are to have any meaning.

The 21st-century educator is a lifelong learner.

How are the students supposed to be interested if the teachers are not interested?

In view of the accelerating development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cyber-Reality (CR), it becomes mandatory to define human uniqueness vs. intelligent machines and Cyber Entities.

The new reality requires a lifetime education model, which is truly future-oriented, and proposed to be based on four pillars: learning, research and design, development and deployment.

This will require.

1. Creativity (Which seems to die in school from the 4th grade on)
2. Communication (Fluency in writing, public speaking, and technology)
3. Collaboration: (Teaming in class as manifest in project-based learning, not just teaming after school in extracurriculars)
4. Critical Thinking: (Including the Internet skill of curating, evaluating, distilling information)
5. Character: The universal values of all major religions and cultures (honesty, empathy, justice, fairness, etc.)
And..
6. Cosmopolitanism – Cross-Cultural Competency.

In view of the catastrophic situation of almost all ecosystems, world disasters needed to be taken care of in order to recreate a sustainable environment for life, not virtual reality.

The big challenge is how to maintain a level of comfort and prosperity, keeping a satisfactory quality of life in balance with the finite resources available and a biosphere with its life-friendly durable ecosystems.

Almost all areas of life have changed or are in the process of being changed.

There will be no point to Algroritm doctors replacing human doctors if there is nothing to analyse other than themselves.

So where are we?

As with all algorithms if we allow Algorithmic teaching without any regulation we will see all the biases laydown by historical records increase.

Without regulations, the only benefits to education will be digital leaders reaping first-mover rewards.

With the Virtual-Reality becoming seamless to Our-Reality, the boundaries between the different realities are increasingly blurry, the world has dramatically changed.

Virtual labs and future design centres will allow experimenting new solutions without causing real harm to the environment.

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