What Is Education For?
I have skulked around the sidelines of the education industry all my life. Initially I was reluctant to leave the safe cocoon of my school with all its comfortable routines and the security it provided. With the instinct of a bird in a gilded cage I somehow knew that life outside was likely to be far more perilous. It turned out to be so. On several occasions I tried to fly back into the cage, venturing into its alluring orbit, only to beat a hasty retreat as I apprehended how different it had become. Over and over, I learned how relatively unaffected by its own product [that is learning] educational officialdom can be.
The education industry in many countries, from schools and colleges right through to national departments of education, actually resist acquiring information of any kind that could imply the need for structural change of the institution itself. By that I am referring to information that challenges how and why things are done, and explicitly using that knowledge to effect internal transformation, in alignment with alternative external conditions. As a general rule this is considered unwarranted, and subsequently either avoided or ignored.
Conservatism of this kind is not necessarily a bad thing. Pedagogical continuity, for example, can help preserve exotic languages, wisdom traditions and ecological knowledge that might otherwise be discarded.
But the question of what education is for changes from one era to another. Is it to facilitate the development of a moral compass to guide an individual through life, or to generate a society capable of thinking new thoughts and doing new things, rather than just repeating what other generations have done? Is education aimed at teaching us compassion, and showing us how to appreciate beauty? Or is it simply the soul of society as it passes from one generation to the next, as the English poet G. K. Chesterton would have us believe? There is no correct answer.
Indeed most people would probably respond yes to all of these, and more, depending on the social context and their individual circumstances. Initially, schooling was aimed at imparting basic literacies, such as reading, writing, and using numbers. Later it evolved into a means for the developing of minds within an explicit moral framework. Very soon it became the most crucial factor for participation in the community - the medium for inducting young people into civic society.
Over the past several decades, however, it has added an additional function explicitly related to keeping the wheels of industrial production turning. Grooming students for a life of paid labour became central to almost all learning. Primary and secondary schooling dispensed students capable of following rules, repeating routines, and recalling facts. Higher education divided these raw materials into vocational, trade, and professional streams. Any unfortunates who fell between the cracks quickly found themselves redundant and reliant on social welfare or, ironically, formed a new incipient class of entrepreneurs, designers and innovators.
Given the disruptive role digital technologies are playing today, and the massive changes we must assume are going to demand a very different kind of workforce, the role of education is once more hanging in the balance. The question concerning what education is for remains particularly pertinent in a world beset by wicked problems, some of them existential in nature. Can we get closer to an answer by studying this issue from within the volatile and ambiguous context of the human condition? What should education be for in a post-pandemic, post-industrial, post-capitalist world?
A defining feature of the recent coronavirus pandemic is the way apparently impregnable institutions – banks, universities, airports, and even entire countries like India – have been shaken to their core. This disease, particularly the universal panic it has caused, signifies not just a mere blip, from which we can simply return to normal, but a portent of a new fragility, especially in terms of globalized infrastructures and supply chains, and our total reliance on digital networks.
It is worth noting that previous pandemics also exposed underlying fault lines in the society, which then ushered in substantial socio-economic changes. It was only after the Black Death that the ruling elite realized the world would be much safer if every citizen could read and write. Likewise, the counter-intuitive concept of a welfare safety net for the under-privileged and unemployed was introduced following the Spanish Flu of 1918. It is probable that a post-COVID-19 world will lead to equally transformative changes. If so, they will inevitably impact education.
So in a post-Covid environment how should we reimagine the 'formal' world of learning? In a world where facts, formulas, tools, and methods are in the public domain and quite literally at our fingertips, should we take the next step and decentralize education? Should the state have a continuing interventionist and regulatory part to play in education, or should we encourage learning from home and decriminalize non-attendance at schools? Are schools and colleges with their standardized practices of exams, tests and gradings relevant anyway? If so, what role should they play, if any, in creating a healthier, adaptive, and empathic society? Should that now become their primary function?
Most of my children were homeschooled, for no other reason than we were constantly on the move and it seemed like the most effective way to achieve some kind of continuity in the face of such a peripatetic existence. At times in my career I have been a tutor, a lecturer, Dean of School, and a professor – working with a range of pedagogical approaches. I have advised various institutions in relation to curriculum design, pedagogy, branding, professional and organisational development. I also Chair an Advisory Board for a progressive international school in Bangkok. To suggest that I am reasonably au fait with major issues confronting education would be an understatement.
To those outside of education, teaching can appear to be an easy way to earn a living, given the long vacations and relatively small number of hours actually spent with students. That is a perverse distortion of the facts. Teaching, particularly in its most radical mode, is one of the most demanding of professions. Yet in financial terms we place less value on the contribution education plays in shaping the future of our society than we do on conflict and war. Â
Because of that, together with the tsunami of exponential change threatening to sweep away centuries of defunct praxis, we stand to miss the chance of stepping into new epistemologies, or of approaching human evolution from alternative design ontologies. Both are essential today as we stare the possibility of extinction in the face.
That might be considered a melodramatic statement. But at no time during my various stints in the education sphere has anyone asked me to seriously consider what education is for. In fact there is much confusion and heated disagreement regarding such a deceptively simple issue.
In order to appreciate the profound nature of this matter, and its importance to us today, it is instructive to examine the issues from within the dynamic of an expanded now. I should also make it clear that I am setting aside, purely for pragmatic reasons, major learning traditions that have germinated in other cultures, and at other times, by focusing my attention purely on modern Western practices.
Even from within this narrow frame of reference the fundamental rationales for learning shift, sometimes considerably, according to the prevailing societal narrative. In turn, the educational 'product' responds by reinforcing explicit tenets relative to that society’s perceived needs and stage of development. This mutual benefit is vital for any deeper comprehension of the role learning can play in creating an abundant future for present and future generations.
There are three interconnected social ecosystems that warrant analysis – early conditioning (or schooling), higher education, and constructive adult activity, including paid and volunteer work such as parenting and caring. The ontological thread connecting these is a window onto underlying assumptions regarding the purpose of education today.
Possibly since the genesis of the industrial revolution, and at least since the early years of the 20th century, the espoused purpose of education has been most commonly expressed as the way individuals can acquire sufficient knowledge and skills to compete with others in getting a job doing constructive work. Work in our society is both the motive and the means whereby individuals trade their labour for money - which can be used to purchase goods and services.
Most commonly we identify opportunities for 'constructive' work within and across six major theatres of human activity. In this context I am excluding illegal pursuits and criminal activities as falling outside of my description of 'constructive' work. Also activities emanating from the industrial-military complex, such as arms dealing, weapons research, and the military, which I deem to be actively 'non-constructive' labour.
The industrial system of production underpinning all economies, populated by commercial enterprise, and driven by the privatization of profits.
Systems of power and governance charged with providing a range of services to the public, including security and the maintenance of social order, inhabited by public service entities and government agencies.
The preserve of ecosystems and landscapes - populated by environmental activists and farmers as well as large industrial corporations (e.g. in agriculture, forestry, fishing and energy) that extract natural resources as raw materials for production and processing.Â
Socialization and learning structures - populated by schools, universities, the media and training companies - as well as parenting and similar voluntary and unpaid work.
Technologies and intelligence systems - populated by entrepreneurial enterprises as well as the large knowledge monopolies that control data.
Community systems populated by a variety of volunteers, carers, charities, sports professionals and entertainers working on preserving social cohesion, and providing diversions while sustaining a healthy social environment.
For this ‘meta-system’ to function we must believe (i) human labour is and will remain necessary, (ii) work is good for us, in a moral sense as well as in terms of mental health and wellbeing, (iii) there will always be an endless supply of 'constructive' work for us to do.
That is not the whole story of course. Increasingly, humans are looking for other factors and deeper meaning in their lives to punctuate the banal routines of work...
Contentious issues relate more to what is not included here - like hobbies, the arts, caring and volunteering, parenting and community development - so often classified as 'non-work' by those responsible for the prevailing social narrative - in addition to that which I have excluded here as being 'non-constructive' and even harmful to humanity.
These mostly unstated yet assumed (and subsequently uninformed) suppositions have been central in directing the attention of those in the domain of formalized education more or less exclusively to the preparation of students for the world of paid work - even resulting in highly detailed structural, pedagogical, and curricula delineations separating specialist technical training from university programs.
As the push for economic growth ramped up in the late 20th century, with fields like science, engineering and technology becoming more and more vital to producing the goods and services needed in a globalized world, a further fracturing occurred. Institutions in the higher education sector began to dedicate their resources to teaching and scholarship, vocational training, or advanced research - with relationships and funding linked to those choices. Less utilitarian programs, in the arts, classics and humanities, became almost inconsequential in the public mind.
Schools and schooling, meanwhile, became the one-size-fits-all device for mitigating any sign of imagination and individual creativity, while reinforcing the established order, so as to certify an abundant supply of disciplined, compliant individuals, into the trades and armed forces, or fields like the law and medicine, which demanded further study.
This, together with the rapid automation of the workplace, explains why we face an existential dilemma and a crisis of consciousness in education today. Particularly relevant is the fact that our two central hypotheses are no longer valid. Work, especially when much of it is pointless, redundant, or can be done more accurately and faster by a machine, is no longer the motivating force it once was. For some individuals, purpose is connected to the love of family and friends, and being free to enjoy activities other than work. For others it is tied to having the security of a job that can no longer be guaranteed. So, once again, we are left with the same question: what is education for today?
With the advent of machine intelligence, autonomous drones, virtual and augmented reality, and self-driving vehicles, we are watching a massive exodus of routine tasks, and even entire industries, from humans to machines. A forensic inquiry of underlying patterns and driving forces reveals a future in which full automation and robots dominate the traditional workplace. Even white collar professions will not be immune as the work available for humans shifts from the mechanical and the routine to a smaller, more generalized, number of roles requiring compassion, creativity, critical thinking and caring. The so-called 'C' society I was talking about thirty years ago has finally arrived in a shockwave of disbelief.
At this stage it is impossible to know precisely how many jobs will be lost to machines, or new jobs created as a result. An educated guess is that possibly 65 per cent of present office and factory work will be done by machines over the coming decade, and as much as 40 per cent of highly skilled work in the professions, leaving many of us with the dual problem of what to do with our time, and how to earn money. This is going to be a giant headache for governments as they grapple with levels of unemployment, and a subsequent lack of social cohesion - problems that are unprecedented in the modern era on a global scale.
These problems will massively disrupt a higher education sector already struggling to retain relevance. Today, many academics have become little more than itinerant workers, while their students are just customers facing years of indebtedness. Lower entry requirements, pay cuts for teachers or job losses, and high fees for an education that disappears like candy floss before you swallow it, are leaving many institutions battling to survive.
Nor did the recent coronavirus pandemic do them any favours. With courses increasingly online, and students working remotely from home, even Cambridge University, the ultimate in physical branding with its ancient colleges and manicured lawns, pivoted to a new reality. Content delivery has become irrelevant. Credentials are all that now matters.
If so much upheaval is dislocating established norms in the workplace and higher education, the role of schools and the nature of schooling must inevitably respond.
The days of teachers passing on knowledge to pupils sitting passively at their desks in a classroom have long gone. The most informed ‘schools’ have already embraced radical pedagogical shifts. From discipline-based subjects taught in 45 minute compartments, to phenomenon-based exploration of topics that actually matter to the next generation, such as the climate crisis, food security, racism and robotics, for example, the learning landscape has been utterly transformed from what it was just a decade ago. The need for basic skills has shifted too. Who needs to be able to write, or speak another language, when almost every interface is voice-activated and translation instantly available?
While I have few doubts that more traditional schools and schooling will continue to exist for the time being, their importance will diminish, along with much of their physical infrastructure. The Covid-19 pandemic has given us opportunities to experience life differently, and less frenetically. Many of us have tried home-schooling with varying forms of online and remote learning, and appreciate the benefits that expanded parental relations can bring. We have avoided the daily commute to the office, and see few reasons to return to the daily commute to school.
If schools are to have any relevance in this post-normal future they will need to adapt quickly. Children will still need to learn skills, but these will mostly be to do with communicating, fostering curiosity and imagination, designing, caring for each other and nature, critical thinking, and innovating. They will also need to get along with each other and solve complex problems together in a world that seems to be charging headlong into a variety of crises.
In this environment we could see a complete reinvention of ‘schools’ together with the elimination of schooling as instruction. Virtual classrooms will become common. Corporations, charities, industries, startups and community enterprises will offer on-the-job mentoring and internships. It is probable, when kids grasp the fact that the most successful entrepreneurs either did not attend college, or dropped out prior to completing their degree, that a college education will become immaterial, or perhaps a more leisurely activity to be undertaken later in life.
It could extend much further of course. Given the various disturbances that are occurring in the world right now, from intensifying geopolitical tensions and increasing authoritarianism, to the climate crisis, and the possible impacts of machine super intelligence, billions of people are awakening to alternatives previously thought unlikely or completely impossible. Gene editing and deep learning technologies provide the very real prospect of elevating our species into a new collective and moral consciousness, totally shifting traditional sources of meaning such as work, family and community. All of that signifies we are on the edge of a paradigm shift - as long as we can survive the hostile conditions we have created that could destroy us before any collective leap of consciousness becomes possible.
If new socio-economic theories embed, as they will need to, work may become optional rather than a necessity - geared to increased care of the elderly and infirm, as well as the urban and natural environments - or even considered a luxury available only to a few.
Existing learning institutions could well respond by renouncing the obsolete tasks of induction and instruction, pivoting instead to create the intergenerational connective tissue to unlock new knowledge, in partnership with other organizations and groups, while also opening up the opportunity to become sanctuaries of regenerative praxis - attentive to the conservation of expertise and appreciation of those wisdom traditions considered most vital for the next stage of human evolution. These moves could place 'learning' institutions once more at the forefront of societal development, instead of limiting their role to front-end education while facing the fate of irrelevance.
The wealthy have the money, relationships, networks and influence to take advantage of the numerous internships, private tutoring, online courses, concierge services, and international travel experiences, already for sale but not yet marketed within the context of learning. Even today the best education they could give their children is not by way of traditional schooling, and at some stage they will wake up to this opportunity.
The flaws in our society exposed by the SARS-2 pandemic also suggest that the education industry may be able to capitalize on a new role - the emotional, cognitive and collective development of society as a whole. If that is the case, we could see the education system turn its back on individual career trajectories altogether, focusing on the shaping of cultures and communities more relevant for the new realities. If that happens it will not be a shock.
The wild card could well be the voices of the unheeded and the dispossessed joining us in fresh dialogues of possibility. When we find value in offering a free education to the under-privileged, bringing them together in multicultural communities, facilitating their exploration of real-world problems from entirely new perspectives, and turning their unique discoveries into informed action, we will have found what education is really for. A wiser evolution of the human family and its reimagined presence on this Earth.