Education in the year 2050: the enlightened era

Mr Ange Kenos Australia House Consultancy and Training Melbourne, Australia

As I sit at my virtual desk here at the beach, in the year 2050, struggling to get through an arduous three hours of work per day, I receive a 3D communication from my employer – a computer someone in the middle of Europe – requiring me to prepare a scenario for education in the year 2100. Not knowing what is expected, I ask my father via my communicator – inserted in my brain at birth – and he refers me to his father, who similarly was part of a project that worked towards education for the year 2030.

The only problem I face is having to read his paper diary and old world electronic records. These were written for a long since outdated ancient computer, rather than have a 3D virtual image do the work, as has been common place for decades now. But I suppose that if I struggle to do so, I will better understand life in the darker ages of his period, just after the turn of the century.

But on my aged father’s advice – while he sits back in his comfortable but somewhat antiquated 2030 built leather recliner with built-in visual and oral communications systems, food storage and transport mode – I begin by noting what we have today. I then look back to what existed in my grandfather’s antiquated era. How they ever survived with minimal computer technology is a mystery I have as yet not solved.

In the year 2050 we have:

• A National Certificate of Education valid across all of Australia, with one broadly based standard curriculum but allowing for changes; students can access any subject, anywhere in the world, learn any language, pursue any scholastic or academic interest and thus create a course that interests them, subject to the content and assessment being at minimum standards.
• There are no age limitations or other discrimination regarding the completion of secondary education or obtaining any tertiary degree. Students can access any tertiary option and, if a practical content is involved, they can undertake it by virtual 3D imagery from any location, subject to the appropriate technological facilities.
• The International Baccalaureate is available in all secondary schools.
• There are standardised degrees, diplomas and certificates, with all such qualifications strictly controlled by an accredited government agency intent on ensuring minimum standards before any qualification is issued. Similarly, all registered training providers are fully trained and competently staffed subject to the foregoing scrutiny.
• Teachers and university academics are interchangeable to allow for greater understanding and professionalism in the few places that such positions still exist. Mentoring is based on the Yale - New Haven fellowship established at the turn of the century.
• Everyone has a computer chip inserted into their brains at birth to allow for optimum communications, memory storage, access, and much more. For example, a person reading anything automatically stores all of that information for later use or deletion, as required. They can see any communication as a 3D image and can communicate with any contact anywhere. Through the chip, they can image the news, weather, any moment recorded from history.
• There are no school buildings because everyone can learn from home or elsewhere through intricate technology, with access to teacher tutors if required.
• Teaching is now more of a support profession, with most education being through the most advanced computers ever created.
• Paper libraries situated within the few non-3D computer-based museums are cared for by retired teachers.
• All communities are long since connected electronically in a global village, with no censorship from politically biased regimes. We have had colonies on the Moon and on Mars for years and are now planning others on more distant worlds, with the power of proton energy systems based upon the re examination of Einstein’s formula that lead to E=mc3 / π r 2 .
• Due to overcrowding, over-development and intensive populations, plus a long drought that lasted for some decades, actual sport involving team activities is largely confined to the outer rural regions of every state, as there are very few unconcreted parks and no sporting grounds left within metropolitan centres.

According to my grandfather’s notes, the world of education began to change in 2006. It was at that time that governments and individuals began to consider how education would be shaped in the decades ahead. A series of conferences and forums in 2006 and 2007 led to a national Australian forum in 2010 and subsequently, in 2015, a world-wide forum that was to establish the formal protocols that changed education by the year 2030. These led the world down the track to what we have today, in 2050.

In 2006, education was extremely restricted, limited and subject to political whims and interferences, limited resources (technological and other) and demonstrated little imagination. Students travelling from one school to another in the same State found significantly different curricula and, between States, the curricula were often as different as two colours of chalk, (whatever chalk is my grandfather does not explain in his notes).

Teachers worked in physical classrooms with students - many utilising little, if any, of the day’s computer technology, enduring atmospheres without sophisticated climate control and enduring violence in some cases or just students without their own personal learning resources.

While some state governments in Australia ‘experimented’ with curriculum changes, such as the Curriculum and Standards Framework (CSF) and the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS), there was no substantive improvement, and thus little progress.

According to his records, while many a private school and most Catholic schools worked hard to ensure quality education, the same was not consistent across all government schools, where some principals deliberately ignored government policy and established their own sub-standard protocols, thus damaging the substantive education of their students and leading to the turmoil that almost saw Victoria break away from the rest of the Australian federation of states.

Sorry, back then they were a Commonwealth under some person called the Queen, instead of the President of the Republic as we have today.

Again, referring to my grandfather’s personal notes, he first saw modern communications on something called a television. There was some movie back then where people wore electronic communicators that had access to 3D technology, world-wide communications and everything else that we have long since taken as normal, albeit we have all this technology via a chip inserted in our brains. This movie idea did not exist in practice in 2006 but it was to become commonplace by the year 2030, before my grand father died from the plague brought back from Mars.

Indeed, the more that I delve the more that I realise that most of what we have today has it roots back in my grandfather’s era, for it was the series of forums in 2006 and 2007 that lead to education being valued and resourced. As Australia’s politicians began to realise that teachers could open the door to the future – just as Japan and Germany had done long since before – they took advice from teachers about what was needed to ensure optimum education for all, without discrimination. It was still not an easy road but they did come to realise that my grandfather was right – those who can educate, those who can’t procrastinate.

If issues such as poverty, global warming, limited food and water supplies, and so much more were to be addressed, then we needed a population that was educated and capable of finding solutions. While we have not yet realised the solutions to every problem, and others have arisen that were not even considered in 2006, the world has progressed.

In 2006, teacher’s conditions were not vastly improved from the Dark Ages. Politicians thought that teachers were primarily about securing greater financial reward for themselves; yet by 2010 the realisation had come that unless teachers were better resourced, offered additional training and encouraged, they would never be able to give all students an equitable and globally embracing education.

One early change was to see all Australian schools follow the lead from the USA to allow true intranet facilities. While some Australian schools had them, they were not commonplace, even though they allowed all students and teachers access to a school website through which all class work could be accessed, viewed, homework stored, and worked assessed.

This was followed by ultra-fast data fibre optical cables being installed in every school, to ensure that internet facilities were at the highest possible download speeds and with full security against theft, hacking and viruses. This itself allowed all school classrooms to be computerised and thus teaching and learning were, at last, on the road to measurable progress.

The next step was also a copy of a successful US formula. Before the turn of the century, a great partnership was formed in the USA between Yale University and teachers in the Newhaven district. This partnership first saw the development of a vast richness of educational resources, lesson plans and ideas that were openly shared without reservation, so that all could experience the very best in education, regardless of their race, gender or financial circumstances. These resources covered every interest area and were developed such that each and every one could be studied formally.
The next step was then somewhat more controversial. Schools and the esteemed Yale University began to enact ‘staff swaps’. To ensure that university staff were aware of the wants and needs of schools, their students, teachers parents, and indeed, even the governments, they would be required to teach in schools for one to two year blocks. This would add to the richness of their teaching and bring further resources to the schools through the networks, contacts and knowledge of the tertiary educators.

At the same time, school teachers would be brought into the universities to add to their own education through further studies and professional development. They would then undertake teaching limited courses at the university level (until they achieved higher qualifications), so they would bring the richness of their vast teaching experience to the otherwise often staid environments of the tertiary sector.

The result was a dramatic growth in the quality of education and thus in the depth of learning. Education was at last recognising the fact that it was a continuous process and did not cease or pause when one left the secondary system to enter tertiary education.

The national forum of 2010 saw Australia lead the world in educational reform and this included Australia hosting the World Education Forum of 2015, where education was to take the next big strides. After this forum the boundaries of the entire tertiary sector were to begin coming down, as did something called the Berlin Wall. Through enhanced computer technology and more open access to this, students were able to study via distance education from any location that was connected to the system.

As Asians, Africans, Europeans and so many others began to absorb the wonderful offerings of the Australian education through their computers, courses began to grow and develop, expand and broaden, such that there was an automatic ripple effect downwards. Secondary schools soon realised that if students were to be allowed to study a greater array of interesting themes at university, such as some law as a part of a medical degree and music as a part of psychology, then schools, too, would have to dismantle their own barriers.

By 2020, all Australian schools were open 24 hours per day, seven days a week, allowing all within the community to access education. Where Holmesglen TAFE was the first educational institution in Australia to open its doors beyond the restricted weekday times, thus better utilising its educational resources, before the turn of the century the rest of Australia had now caught up. But in so doing, school buildings were to seal their fate.

By 2030, there were very few school buildings left in Australia. With computer technology being so expansive and efficient, at least according to the standards of my father’s day, school buildings were no longer essential, as students could work from home at their own paces, at their own times of convenience.

However, this also meant that the role of teachers was to change. While they were still required in the few physical schools that remained, most teachers instead became tutors and guides, working to assist open classrooms of sometimes hundreds of students at a time, with the vast support of enhanced technology. Students were learning for themselves, with teachers acting as supports, advisers, and mentors. They were still teaching but in a vastly different manner to that when my grandfather was a teacher.

And there you have it. Little has changed in education since 2030, which I did not know before, other than it improved even more. The standards that we now enjoy in 2050 were first considered in 2006 and 2007 and then developed along the way to 2030. Education entered the world of enlightenment and the whole world now enjoys the benefits.