So, I’m 104, my son is 57, his son is 30 and his son is starting school! It is 2050

Dr David Warner ELTHAM College of Education Melbourne, Australia

Beginning to sound a bit ridiculous? My fear is that someone asked the same conference question of the future school in 1906. The answer was that in 1950 we wouldn’t recognise it because it would be so different. We got to 1950 and school still felt and looked a lot like 1906. Now the pace of change between 1906 and 1950 was somewhat slower than that between 2000 and 2006, but we still haven’t much changed schooling in the last six years either! So, why would anyone want to believe that 2050 schooling will have much of a different feel to it?

There is a glimmer of hope!  The baby boomers will be long gone, Generation X just retiring and Generation Y will have changed the nature of schooling. They won’t see it as the long-term institution that ensures some sense of societal maintenance. There will not be a lingering carry-over of a belief that society’s wealth and health depends on the standards of ‘English, mathematics and physics’ that were developed when Kevin Donnelly (Why schools are failing, 2003) wore short pants!

Let’s hope that this culture of the future will allow people to walk to school, too!The new schooling will have the generations learning together. There will be relevance and as much learning outside school as inside. In fact, inside will be a time for young people to both enjoy themselves in ‘people interactive mode’, consult with their individual learning advisor in face-to-face mode, engage in activities that are difficult to simulate in the cyber-world and mix with other people (adult parents, workers, retirees) feeling a sense of security that such a world can bring. My God, but what about the child molesters if we have open schooling? I suspect that we should know that such are much more prevalent in shopping malls and family homes than in active learning environments. Let’s hope that this culture of the future will allow people to walk to school, too!

Relevance is an interesting term. Elliot Eisner (2003/2004: 8) cautions us to think about present school culture. He argues that ‘we can best prepare students for the future by enabling them to deal effectively with the present’. This is relevance. However, I suspect that we rationalise that we are doing something when we have government-sponsored think-tanks, workshops, and so on, questioning what the future school should be. Where would futurists like Richard Neville be if we didn’t pay him to come to conferences and challenge us in an ever-so-nice way to recognise that the world has changed and the future may well be different?

I need to be honest - I have no real idea what schooling might look like in 2050! If the world continues to transform at its present rate (remember that in 2001 only 15% of Australian homes had the internet; now it is about 70% of homes with young people of 15 and younger), then thank God, we won’t recognise these things that we might still call schools today.

The International Network for Educational Transformation (iNet Australia) has produced an interesting little paper in which it suggests a values position and a framework that embodies a range of principles that should govern present-day schooling. It takes Eisner’s position that getting it right now might well mean that future schooling will always take care of its young people. The key is, of course, relevance to the world of young people, the world they live in and the learning enhancements they will need to manage their learning, living and working in the future.

Generation Y (after them, I suspect Generation Z) have lost interest in the way we (baby boomers and the older X’s) have structured living, learning and working.Generation Y (after them, I suspect Generation Z) have lost interest in the way we (baby boomers and the older X’s) have structured living, learning and working. MySpace on the internet creates a greater social relevance that the narrow networks provided in traditional, even not-so traditional, school classrooms. Even when they become teachers, they are not sucked in by ‘a lifetime of giving to young people’ or ‘a lifetime of sharing with fellow idealists who always know what is best for young people’. They ‘reckon’ that there might be something in it, are willing to try, they want to be on a first name basis, they want to be paid well and they expect to move on to something else, somewhere else and, in fact, they want more relevant and speedy training so they can get in and do it. Their attitudes might well help break down the traditional walls. Fortunately for young people of the future, most boomers will retire sometime soon and the newer people won’t be scared of learning, social-learning networks and the open school.

I have to admit that I don’t know how the new social-learning and networking actually works today, let alone how it will work in 40 years. I do know that it does work and that people from five to 35 years are just part of it. I do also know that schools are trying to hide from it - kicked out of the library for being on MySpace rather than a history project on the Middle Ages.

You know, I have enormous belief that, given the right learning culture, opportunities, skills for learning for life and the freedom to learn, most young people today and in 2050 will make it! They just might make it in ways that have eluded us. They will combine schooling, university, vocational training, working and networking/socialising. All very good, some will say, in senior schooling, but what about the very young ones? I guess I need also to say that the young ones have been effectively learning in these ways for a very long time. It’s just that school knocked it out of them, particularly upper primary and secondary students.

So perhaps we need to talk about transition. This is a word much favoured by educators as we try to create smooth transitions from one part of schooling to another, and then we work on transitioning them to post-school. However, I also believe that we run the risk of again rationalising away our need to do something now. So much simpler to re-design some buildings, inject some funds to lift facility standards, modify the curriculum, and so on.

Give the University of Melbourne credit. It recently said ‘In five years you will not recognise us. We are not just about a facelift. We are going to change higher education in Australia forever’. Have we said that in schools? Have governments had the vision and courage to say ‘In five years you will not recognise schooling because it will be relevant?’ No, it is safer to talk in 20 or 30 year’s time. Someone else’s problem then! No, today the Federal Government is saying ‘In five years we want you to look and feel like schools did in 1970’.

Sorry, I don’t want to get excited by what schooling might be in 2050. I want to be excited by what we can do to make schools exciting, rewarding and relevant for the kids of today. Then, in 2050, they will know just how to do it!

Reference

Eisner, E, ‘Preparing for today and tomorrow’, Educational Leadership, December 2003/January 2004