What We Talk About Education When It's 2042

When we talk about future, hope and fear come hand in hand, and future education is no exclusion.

In The next 25 years?: future scenarios and future directions for education and technology, Facer & Sandford (2010) describe such a world where people maintain their relationship with others or institutions via loyalty points, which is to say, only when you make contributions then you are qualified for benefits. In such a highly organized and regulated society, education comes in the forms of either "discovery" with which you can still choose on your own or "diagnosis" with which a field will be chosen for you. I do see the point of this prediction and believe that it may actually happen. What's more, with respect to high efficiency and limited resources, "diagnosis" is more likely the case. 

Because firstly we have already lived in a society built on credits, which shows its power when we apply for credit cards and loans, of course, as well as when we look for jobs and degrees. Wherever we go, our history goes with us. Also, advanced technologies facilitate the assessment and evaluation of ourselves, which may play an important role in deciding what and how we learn. People are obsessed with collecting data nowadays and data about ourselves or people related to us is obviously the focus. To conclude, in such a future world everyone is so transparent and easy to analyze and categorize, thus it is highly possible that some institution or authority would "diagnose" you and decide the form and content of education for you and claim that it's for the sake of total interests of mankind. The movie The Giver depicts exactly this world, in which every teenager gets assigned to a certain job when they graduate according to their characteristics and previous performance. As Meryl's role, a governor says in the movie: 

There would be no room for people to give trials and learn from failures. Can you not be intimidated by this possibility?

While my own prediction is somewhat alike, just less extreme. We cannot deny that a lot of people feel lost when deciding what to learn and what to do, thus a well-designed assessment and counseling service would be of great help. Students would spend much less time to study basic knowledge together during which their learning patterns and talents could be assessed. They then step into suggested or self-chosen professional field earlier to study about and contribute to that certain field at the same time. Since informal learning and problem-based learning is increasingly promoted and learning in working scenarios is essential, I believe that learning integrated into working would eventually prevail school learning. While it does not mean that people would be constrained. Oppositely, since the value of degrees is weakened, people get more freedom to try different industries.

I'm also wondering how education could be more equal for learners from different regions and socioeconomic status. Better management of as well as easier connection to Mooc and open educational resources is the way to go. So I'm willing to imagine that 25 years later, instructional devices are so popularized that as long as electricity exists, knowledge is accessible to whoever is thirsty for it. While as Constructivism suggests, knowledge itself is hardly enough for learners, who also need learning environment and specialized instruction to construct their own understanding of the knowledge. I could only hope that no matter AR, VR or other smart technologies would bring those important factors to the learners who cannot access them.

directions for education and technology