It is a daily struggle to make sense of our world as it is characterised by perpetual and often disruptive change. Attempts to gain a steady footing in this condition of flux are confounded by the growth of a pervasive complexity that tethers us together in ways once thought unimaginable. Meanwhile, a deepening uncertainty unveils vast ignorance. The twenty-first century has been marked by postnormal times, where traditional approaches and solutions are no longer adequate to address the multifaceted challenges that we must face within our communities and as a society.

Education is precious to every society. It is the foundation on which civilisation advances and further develops. If left unnurtured, it is where our downward spiral begins. Almost as universally accepted as this pretence is the growing desire – need – for educational reform. As much as reform is craved, fear holds back any change to the ossified walls of our tried and tested educational institutions. Yet as this tectonic give and take proceeds, educational outcomes are below par, knowledge and critical thinking capacities diminish, and class after class of fresh graduates find themselves increasingly ill-equipped for the world we send them into. A whole new world awaits our students than the one our educational systems were created to prepare them for. In our hesitance towards change, a troubling mismatch has resulted between our standards of education and the reality of the world that education is supposed to prepare students for. And that reality remains in flux, and this looks to be the case for quite some time. We must find a way to navigate our students, and thus, our society forward.

To do this, first, a true sense of educational reform is required. And this goes beyond the lip service that has gained significant currency as the above becomes more and more apparent. Yet the actualisation and sustainable longevity of the reforms demanded is the result of a trap. The basic assumptions of our educational systems, and the instructional models they inform, have become the pawn of economic utility at the cost of the quality of education itself. Public education, once a wellspring of societal change and progress, has been grinded by the gears of an industrial model fit for a manufacturing society. The result is the ultimate contradiction, a cold efficiency that serves neither the economy or the minds and needs of students or society at large. Despite the obvious, yet ignored, disfunctions of mass education, and those of the earlier attempts at reform, such as the Waldorf School and Montessori movement and more recently with US charter schools, the beat goes on. And yet, regardless of our perceived inability to make change, the world carries on, increasingly changing dramatically.

 

by Christopher Jones, Ziauddin Sardar, and Scott Jordan

Edited by Mirza Sarajkić

Published by the Mulalić Foundation & CPPFS

Download