THE NEW FRONTIERS OF EDUCATION
 
Roberto Carneiro, UNESCO, 19 September 1998.
 


 
The future of education runs in parallel with the predicament of humankind.

 

After all, education has always been regarded as a kind of pansofia destined to make the most of knowledge and wisdom attained in the realm of each generation.

 

The unity of the human person stretches over the contingencies of time or space. However, behind this essential unity the human personality has develop a myriad of masks, as if it was seized by an inner drive to unfold in constant representations of the universe’s major attribute: creativity.

 

As a consequence, every human development path has inevitably led to cultural mutants. This intense cultural multiplication is displayed in a remarkable showcase of human diversity.

 

Figure 1

 

Indeed, we are now witnessing the emergence of a new breed of cultures: those developed by the Homo conectus or collegatus, a culture of on-line networking, made possible by the instancy of modern information and communication technologies. In any event, it is important to note that the initial stages of connectivity are directly linked to the needs of the Homo economicus, increasing his mastery of the world.

 

The persisting prevalence of the Homo economicus in our civilisation entails serious imbalances in the city (polis, civitas). The notion of accumulation beyond human needs and its legitimisation by capitalistic modes of production is eroding the social fabric and spreading exclusion to a level unforeseen in the theory of modern cities.

 

Therefore, rescuing our cities as symbols of human progress and places of memory appears as a formidable and primordial task. A new city paradigm will have to respond to four major challenges, each and every one central to the rediscovery of the educating city, as Athens described of herself in relation to Ancient Greece, some 3,000 years ago.

 

Figure 2
 

This concept of an educating city is propelled through a new social contract. A contract that seeks an urban redesign inspired by the notion of local neighbourhood. Restoring a human scale in the contemporary metropolis is a pre-condition for governance, the way to build-up social capital and trust, the foundation of enhanced social cohesion and the strategy to arrive at communities of high-touch.

 

Only the effective consolidation of urban intelligence can aspire at overcoming the spiralling city opacity. Our urban conglomerates can then become subjects and engines of learning, loci of inclusiveness and participatory citizenship – referred to in fig. 2 as our common urban home and as the task of re-inventing urban democracy).

 

The fates of cities and education remain twinned. Thus, it is barely surprising that the mounting tensions in the way we live together are necessarily reflected in new tensions in education. Indeed, the educational system mirrors with remarkable accuracy the contradictions of the society it is devoted to serve.

 

These tensions range from the interplay between tradition and modernity to the difficult trade-offs faced in public policy-making: between the long and short-range; from the search for increased equity in a world geared by fierce competition to the need to reconcile global (or universal) approaches with local (or individual) needs; from the clash between an ever-growing expansion of knowledge and the limited human capacity to assimilate it; plunging into the delicate interplay between the spiritual and the material.

 
Figure 3
 

In the light of this broad perspective we can now spell out three major societal outlooks that provide the contextual background for educational development in the next century. These issues were retained in the form of broad initial chapters in our report to UNESCO entitled Learning: The Treasure Within (presented by the Delors Commission in April, 1997).

 

These outlooks address, in a global setting, the main social, cultural and economic challenges put forward to humankind in the turn of the century.

 

The choice to look into these issues from an educative angle bears far-reaching consequences to the way how educational priorities are casted.

 

Inevitably, it highlights a somewhat controversial choice of the major challenges facing our societies in the turn of the century and millennium that call for a certain form of educational response.

 

Figure 4
 

This analysis has inspired the Delors Commission to put forward its main proposition for education in the 21st century. The vision proposed rests on four pillars of learning: learning to be, learning to know, learning to do and learning to live together.

 

Figure 5

 

I shall not enter into details as to the specific recommendations contemplated in each pillar as these are extensively developed in the cited report. However, it is interesting to further understand how these broad categories of learning priorities relate to the so-called strategies of the knowledge-based societies so widely are heralded as the new mainstream paradigm.

 

The World Bank’s 1998 edition of the World Development Report symptomatically elects this theme as a priority. Knowledge for Development is now the name of the game, well attuned to the growing demands of the cognocratic society. Likewise, the new growth theories that are very much inspired in the contribution of human knowledge to the diffusion and creation of technological innovations indicate four pillars of modern sustainable development.

 
Figure 6
 

These dramatic changes towards the valuation of intangible economies and immaterial societies have once again propelled education to the centre of strategic thinking. Moreover, learning is developing into a kind of post-modern ideology. Curiously, in an era of diffuse ideologies, the human intelligentsia seems to have found something new to cling to. Learning individuals, learning communities, learning organisations, and learning nations, seem to represent the consensual agenda for the future.

 

In this comprehensive approach it is interesting to acknowledge what could constitute a sound basis for a new social contract or pact. We speak of a broad partnership intertwining both rights and obligations that are significant to the knowledge-based society concerns.

 

Under this perspective, education is not simply the exercise of a universally recognised right. It is also the reverse of learning as a moral duty: an integral part of citizenship and of the obligation to remain socially active in a rapidly evolving environment.

 

Figure 7
 

Now that we have arrived at knowledge as a core concept to our societies I will further submit to you that our educational institutions are not simply faced with a quantitative challenge. Indeed, it is an undisputed fact that knowledge expands at an unprecedented rate. However, the most puzzling mutation is that which affects the ultimate nature of knowledge.

 

New knowledge is undergoing constant metamorphosis. The most important change concerns the transition from objective knowledge (codified and scientifically organised) to subjective knowledge (a personal construct, intensely social in its processes of production, dissemination and application).

 

Thus, in the case of personal/cultural knowledge – following a new typology of knowledge patterns for post-industrial societies – social intercourse is a primeval agent. Memory, cultural background, family contexts, ethnic heritages, language of emotions, all these factors have a strong bearing on the way how and on the paths to build and acquire knowledge.

 

Therefore, education and training strategies will also need to adapt to the knowledge wetware contained in the immense variety of the human mindsets.

 

Accepting the fact that knowledge is very much a personal construct is implicitly recognising a variety of roads leading to its timely appropriation.

 

Figure 8

Knowing is not a simple operation. It is not an immediate yield of teaching. We are tempted to complexify the conceptual ways of knowing by differentiating between, at least, four distinct ways:

 
Figure 9
 

Knowing what and why correspond to our traditional visions surrounding teaching: objective knowledge constructed and rotationally transmitted around the notions of causal effects. Knowing who and how, pay justice to the softer aspects of knowledge production, which appear to be highly contingent on the social and cultural environments. With this approach in mind, experience (learning-by-doing) is a powerful avenue to enhance learning, particularly in all what concerns Metis (practical knowledge) as opposed to Episteme or Techne using the old Greek classification.

 

Learning thus requires increasing flexibility. It tends to take place everywhere and everyplace, unlike the traditional modes of teaching, which can only occur, in highly formalised settings.

 

Figure 10

 

The transition from the first to the fourth quadrant in fig.10 represents the conceptual switch from Jomtien (1990) - and its appealing call for an Education for All world-wide movement - to a Learning Throughout Life for All approach, which is more in line with the new requirements of the knowledge-based society.

 

To make the most of this philosophy of education, knowing to know will also have to drift away from the Western-biased axioms of cognition. This is what we have designated as moving away from a strictly western canon of knowledge to a more global canon, that is open to the best epistemic contributions of all cultures and human stories. The simple rational algorithms of a purely eurocentric canon fall short of the explanations needed to interpret a complex, uncertain world.

 

Only a polissemic approach to knowledge can provide the means to overcome fragmentation and linearity. Furthermore, effective progress and social development are strongly dependent on generators of diversity, rather than systems of standardisation.

 

The modern reality is filled with complexity. Complexity tends to evolve into self-organising systems based on emergent properties.

 

Our fundamental submission is that learning becomes the emergent property of biological organisations. These entities are capable of reaching higher forms of self-organisation, unlike their purely mechanical peers.

 

Figure 11

 

Inclusive knowledge is the step forward. Knowledge which escapes the classical teaching approach to revolve around flexible learning processes, aimed at cognitive achievements, meta-cognitive skills (the ability to self-regulate learning efforts) and also the acquisition of soft/social skills.

 

Future learning contents will then address a wealth of human needs. Not merely the production of professional skills or economic assets, as was the norm in the industrial society and prescribed by its human capital derivatives. Following this approach, we may classify the human advancement needs for learning throughout life in three main categories.

 

The first one, pertains to the sphere of inner coherence and to the related necessity of meaning-making throughout life; this is the territory where the Homo Sapiens Sapiens builds sense. The second category contemplates the wealth of citizenship requirements in an active democracy as well as participatory skills in a fully social entrepreneurship: the formation of social capital and the thrust towards enhanced social cohesion. The third category addresses the productive person and his/her challenge of sustainable employability throughout the entire life span.

 

This comprehensive understanding of educational needs is what society at large is demanding as what could be called a set of higher level basic skills. These basic skills transcend, to a large degree, the classical debates concerning the core curriculum and its learning outcomes.

 

Seen in this broader framework, learning throughout life is a multidimensional effort. In the light of what we have earlier proposed it becomes a central motto, a sort of compulsive ideology, to shape our unfolding societies.

 

Figure 12
 

To summarise, we can now speak of six prime directions for learning throughout life.

 

These directions will set the scenario and the pace for a profound reform in our educational systems. The outcome is difficult to trace at a distance but one thing is for sure: the old paradigms of a rote industrial mode of production, reflected in a hierarchical school organisation will require profound re-engineering

 

Learning throughout life is no longer a simple extension of a two-stage imagery: the mere sequence of initial cum further education.

 

The concept calls for a wide re-consideration of a life time allocation to learning, embracing the up-surging phenomena of the new elder, the flexible organisation of work, and combined strategies of productive learning activities.

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Figure 13
 

We shall end with some practical propositions, largely inspired in what has been advanced in the Delors Report in the form of basic propositions to the international community.

 

In an attempt to foresee some public policies that could have a practical impact on institutional change we will put forward three strategic ideas.

 

A first one would be to stimulate a demand-driven lifelong learning system through study-time entitlements given out after compulsory schooling.

 

A second priority consists in putting teachers at the centre of learning opportunities. Indeed, one can detect a worrisome trend in public policies to desinvest from teachers. Conversely, we would make a strong plea to invest in the teaching force with the aim that it becomes the major source of content provision in the information-led world. Making available to them appropriate authorware tools, as well as hardware and software, accompanied by intensive re-training opportunities, would mobilise teachers to overcome the passive model of the past: being told how to perform and condemned to utilise prescribed materials developed by someone else.

 

Thirdly, we would strongly favour a dual system of learning, designed to bridge codified and tacit knowledge and equipped to overcome the traditional opposition between humanities and professional studies.

 

We believe that it is time that our civilisation surpasses the old thinking that opposes general culture to vocational skills. If other arguments were absent, it would suffice to listen to the growing claims of employers on their views concerning the prime importance of imparting basic and social skills, rather than insisting on training for narrow professional aptitudes.

 

Figure 14
 

Education and Learning are a key priority to determine the design of a 21st century that will become far better than the previous century.

 

As a consequence, international co-operation in this field requires a further impetus and a stronger commitment.

 

We can now contemplate three major steps in this effort to produce a breakthrough momentum in the international community. The knowledge-based society can only seek moral justification on grounds of greater equity than its predecessor model.

 

Figure 15

 

The 21st century brings an air of fresh hope.

 

Learning is truly the treasure contained within these new times.

 

The industrial society’s legacy is a generation of consumers and producers. Unfortunately, this does not reflect a very bright story.

 

The learning society opens the road to a generation of creators!

 

 

 

Roberto Carneiro, UNESCO, 19 September 1998.