Metacrisis is an educational crises.
-Dr. Zach Stein
We are facing complex wicked problems but we are lacking the capacities to respond to them. When the problem is bigger than our abilities to respond, it is an educational crisis by nature.
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​On top of that I am highly critical of the current schooling system, which is based on the ideals from industrial era and on the metatheory of Human Capital Theory, where human is only considered valuable as a productive capital for the society. I dream of educational systems where human lives as well as other life is the main value in itself.
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School is no future
I have several arguments why I believe the (Finnish) schooling system does not respond to the needs of our times and even less to the needs of the future.
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1. Schools don't prepare the youth to respond to the crises that are waiting for them
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The crises we have at hand which keep escalating, are systemic in nature. They feed into each other and are impossible to solve in isolation. They could be called polycrisis or metacrises. If you want to fix mental health problems, you need to also fix financial, educational, social and political issues.
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To respond these, one must develop systems thinking skills and understanding of complex living systems. Complexity thinking requires new kind of perspective and view on the world around us. According to Dr. Iain McGilchrist changing how we perceive our world and move our attention, comes down to our two hemispheres. The kind of education our current schooling system offers, is highly reductionistic, categorical and single-context centered. Math is separated from languages and especially from arts and sports.
Nora Bateson speaks of transcontextual mutual learning, which I belive is more what the thinkers and leaders of our times need. Understanding the warm data of where ecology meets economy where it meets religion.
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2. Standardisation of schooling doesn't take diversity into account
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3. What students learn doesn't match the work they are expected to do and create
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We live in information tech era with all the information and knowledge in our pockets. Knowing what is the name of that tree or the phrase for "My dad is a cook" in Swedish is something I can check in three seconds on my phone. The information and learning information is not what is much helpful in employment of our times.
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Even now the nature of work is much more complex. I need to master several skills, learn many more as I go and keep my mind stable in the middle of all. People don't stay in one job for long and the changes within companies and departments happen faster and faster. Learning new things and being creative are increasingly important.
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Creativity however is grossly overlooked in our educational systems at the moment. It is viewed as skill useful in arts subjects, and nowhere else. The need to be able to create your own work and be innovative, only gets highlighted in the future.
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We have astronomically fast developing AI on our laps. It means that the jobs and work places we now have are threatened to disappear in the future. No one knows what employment looks like in the future but most likely nothing like now, and even more so nothing like in industrial times, which the school is training us for.
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However, learning to be with the uncertainty and growing inner skills to become resilient and anti-fragile are key. The ones who are able to breath in the midst of a chaos are the ones thriving in the future.
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4. Competition is over
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The problems of our times are much due to one generating function: win-lose dynamic. The winner takes it all. Arms race all the way. What it has led to is extractive behaviour and systems, narrow goals and wins over long-term harm, natural world crumbling to pieces, and humans who lack meaning in life.
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School is one of the first places which introduce this competitive logic. And not only does it introduce it but it's based on it. Get higher scores, get better education, get better jobs, get more money. Children are competing with each other and with themselves. Children are reported to be more and more stressed because of school.
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Not only is it right for the lives of the children but at large for the Life on our planet that we start changing course from this competitive game logic. Learning can be viewed more like infinite play, like children's play (which is also the most productive way to learn). I am interested to explore what kind of learning environments support this kind of learning.
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Learning is natural, schools are not
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Learning is what comes to all animals as a birth gift. We learn to smile, walk, speak without formal education or schooling. Toddlers move in the world with the questions "what" and "why" as their greatest teachers.
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Schooling, however is an unnatural setting for learning. I don't believe learning can be taught or ordered, it can only be given the right circumstances to happen. And I argue, school is not the right circumstance.
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My ideas, thoughts and knowledge lies heavily on Dr. Zach Stein's writings, especially "Education in the times between worlds" -book.
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