In "Education - 21 Century Challenges" about "What should we teach children?" we posed two additional questions:
What advice should young people follow?
Who or where should they turn for advice when adults' wisdom may only be outdated biases?
We suggested two (visual) approaches; one that departs from the current situation and one that departs from 2050. We began by exploring Quintessentially Me - Student 2050, and here we will present our efforts regarding the first approach: Your Face as a Student 2018.
This journey started with the picture at the top of the blog post. The inspiration came
from ideas about education that I had based on my own experiences as a parent. It was also based on the idea often encountered in the media that schools have changed and are providing students with opportunities to be curious about the world. The ideas and the thinking came to a stop after looking for further inspiration by watching a TV series about schools. Suddenly it became very clear that the picture did not convey the experiences that some students have today. Admittedly, there are many different types of school and educational setting, however, the TV series painted a rather grim picture of students' life in 2018. As a result of this insight, another picture was created and it was designed as a postcard. Dead leaves and flowers were used as symbols for a "soul that is shrivelling up" under the pressure to be perfect and perform.
Now we have attained a rather intuitive idea about the current situation (this post) and that in 2050 ( this post). Confronting these two opposite approaches, what are the similarities and differences? Are they revealing uncertainties and points of resistance? Could we develop diverse scenarios for possible future educational worlds?
What thinking to do next? We will continue in another post!
