Texto en español: ¿Cuál educación del siglo 21?
Everyone talks about 'Education for the 21st Century' or 'Education in the 21st Century':
- 21st century knowledge
- 21st century skills
- 21st century students
- 21st century educators
- 21st century schools
- 21st century classrooms
Strictly speaking, however, there is no 'Education in the 21st Century'.
▸ The century is just beginning
We can hardly visualize one or two decades ahead. The world could not anticipate, and prepare for, the 2020 deadly global pandemia. Who can tell what the planet, human life and education will be like in 2050? Nobody can anticipate what can happen in 100 years, and in this century in particular, characterized as one of big uncertainties, rapid changes, major crises and catastrophes.
▸ What 21st century?
The 21st century is not the same for everyone. Millions of people do not enjoy the benefits of modernity and comfort, do not have running water, toilets, electricity, decent work and housing, reading and writing, good education opportunities, basic services and basic citizenship rights.- About 1 in 4 people live in multidimensional poverty or are vulnerable to it.
- More than 40% of the global population does not have any social protection.
- 840 million people live without electricity.
- Over one thousand million people has no drinking water and 2 in 5 people have no facilities for hand-washing.
- 43% of schools worldwide have no facilities to wash hands with water and soap (UNICEF, 2019)
- 6.5 billion people – 85.5% of the global population – don’t have access to reliable broadband internet.
Source: UN/UNDP 2020
Inequalities - within each country, between countries, between the global North and the global South - become structural: extreme poverty and extreme wealth, hyper-consumption and misery, overinformation for some and zero information for others, the illiterate and the overqualified, the connected and the disconnected.
Home-based virtual education, recommended by UNESCO and others while schools are closed because of the covit-19 pandemia and the confinement, remains out of reach for half of the world's population who lack access to the Internet.
Evidently, life in the 21st century is very different for those living with less than 1 or 2 dollars a day (those living in extreme poverty) and for those participating fully in the Information Society, the Knowledge Society, the Digital Society.
▸ What education?
There is no education in singular, as a universal fact and as a homogeneous experience. There are educations, in plural, diverse in nature, purposes and qualities, because realities, cultures, ideologies, aspirations and needs of concrete social groups are highly diverse. And because education is not confined to the education system; there is education in the family, in the community, at the workplace, through the media, participation, social service, etc.
Education and learning needs and experiences are shaped by specific economic, social and cultural contexts and conditions. Community and family education models shaped historically by indigenous populations, many of which continue to operate in many countries worldwide, have different logics and epistemologies.
There are no one-size-fits-all education formulas for all.
▸ Education in the 21st century?
Education in the 21st century is diverse, placed historically in this century and geographically in each specific context, and does not necessarily correspond to the '21st century' vision coming from the 'developed world'.
Millions of children and youth have never seen a computer and don't know what can be found behind a screen. Millions of children and youth don't know where food comes from, how to grow a potato, a lemmon, a tomato. Different types of ignorance.
▸ 21st century skills?
Skills needed are different or have different priorities for different people in different places, cultures and circumstances. Lists of "21st century skills" circulated by international organizations are generally conceived and proposed from the North, for eminently urban realities. Childre, young people and adults living in poverty, need and develop skills than enable them to survive in very difficult circumstances, help and take care of their families, learn and share in their communities. The 'top 10 21st century skills' circulated worldwide in 2016 by the World Economic Forum and adopted by millions of people in the North and in the South, have little to do with the skills real people need in 2020 to deal with the global covid-19 pandemia.
Related texts in this blog (English)
» Basic Learning Needs: Different Frameworks
▸ Education in the 21st century?
Millions of children and youth have never seen a computer and don't know what can be found behind a screen. Millions of children and youth don't know where food comes from, how to grow a potato, a lemmon, a tomato. Different types of ignorance.
▸ 21st century skills?
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World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs, 2016 |
Related texts in this blog (English)
» Basic Learning Needs: Different Frameworks