I Have a Dream: The Future of Education

I have a dream that one day students will be more important than syllabi.

In the not too distant future, education will be a collaborative enterprise, with teachers and students assuming shifting roles as coaches, mentors and learners.

I can see, just over the horizon, classrooms becoming dynamic student-centered learning spaces designed around student exploration and collaboration and not the teacher.

Soon, students will choose a blend of subject modules designed to stimulate and enhance their own differentiated personal interests. These modules will largely be designed and taught by both teachers and students.

It will not be long before schools extend their boundary walls into virtual and digital spaces so that learning becomes ongoing and integrated meaningfully with students’ lives.

I have a dream that within our lifetimes, personal enrichment, critical analysis, creative output, and purposeful problem-solving will be considered at least as important as factual recall in education.

It will happen that schools and teachers will carefully select and embrace technologies that enhance engagement and learning. This will begin with service providers offering free, ubiquitous and high bandwidth internet access as part of a tax arrangement with their governments.

Soon, education systems will actively encourage the development students’ empathy and environmental consciences. Schools themselves will become beacons of hope and the driving forces of improving the lives of those less fortunate. They will also become sustainable communities, embracing environmentally friendly technologies.

Not too many tomorrows from now, the format students select to prove their own mastery will be one of their own choosing. Assessment will not be standardized and canned – instead, it will be individualized and student-generated.

There will be time to think in the future. Students will have time to reflect and ponder in place of being perpetually pummeled by overstuffed curricula.

I have a dream that in a few decades, indoctrination of any kind will be recognized for what it is: dangerous and destructive.

Bullying at schools must, and will become entirely obsolete. This includes not only the bullying of students by students, but also bullying of students by teachers, teachers by other teachers and teachers by school management and the education authorities.

One day, students will learn and show mastery at their own pace. ‘Classes’ will consist of mixed age groups determined by how quickly and thoroughly learning challenges are mastered. Those who choose to move more slowly and deliberately will be celebrated as much as those on an accelerated learning path.

Schools around the world will eventually become hotbeds of customized learning and discovery and interaction. As a result, both teachers and students will be happy, enthusiastic and will enjoy every minute of school.

A time will come when a teacher’s ongoing, self-driven professional development, peer learning and collaboration will be considered as important as their experience. (And we will discover that experience is not the same thing as wisdom.)

Staffrooms will become an informal learning and collaborative and shared spaces for teachers in the same way as classrooms become learning hubs for students.

I have a dream that the future will bring more time and smaller classes for teachers who can then get to know each and every student in their classes.

Teachers will be free to try new methodologies and techniques in the same way that students will, without fear of failure.

Images from: http://www.futurelab.org.uk