Debates on education with Charles Leadbeater, one of the world's most influential thinkers. He is a writer, a visiting fellow at Oxford University and The Young Foundation, and has worked in a government advisory capacity, including with the UK Department for Education’s Innovation Unit. His more recent publications include "The Problem Solvers".
SUMMARY
The aim of education has to be to achieve success in life, considering success in its broadest sense. But we live in times where the future is uncertain, where past trends are interwoven with new trends influenced by cutting-edge technology. This means living constantly in a whirlwind (Leadbeater talks of a washing machine) from where new "things" emerge with which people have to keep creating. Children and young people need to be ready to tackle this situation and get the best out of it, facing the future with infinite possibilities.
In many cases, we continue to offer an education that trains people for an industrial society, with standardized knowledge for mechanical jobs. This type of education does not provide the skills that help with adapting to the changing situations created by cutting-edge technology, which could replace people in many cases with robots and algorithms.
We are teaching people to be bad robots when what we really should be doing is training people to be more human, to do the things that robots cannot do: be more empathetic, collaborative, creative, able to create metaphors and to take the initiative.
The crux of the matter changes from following instructions to solving problems.
Event organized by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia) and the Jaume Bofill Foundation, with the collaboration of MACBA. http://www.debats.cat/en, #debatseducacio
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