Preparing for the Unknown

Been off air for a time, but here I am again.

Still stuck on this theme of school Principals and their teachers needing to seriously contemplate preparing students for an unknown world and what this means for the contemporary curriculum. It would be a process of thinking into the future maybe guided by the views of top futurists and ethicists. In a crowded organisational environment like a school this requires valuable time, but I believe it to now be essential.

The Covid19 pandemic has made us all sit up and think how vulnerable we are as humans on this planet. How can we survive such things if we do not act in a globally constructive manner? Nationalism is rife as countries withdraw into themselves.  The pandemic has once again revealed that under such disastrous happenings the inequalities of peoples across the world, including within my own country Australia, are heightened. The poor, the unemployed, the displaced persons as refugees will suffer most. While the pandemic rages people are still being killed by modern weaponry in various conflicts fuelled by power struggles based on religion, territorial disputes and what I can only describe as power-grabbing narcism of some would be dictators.

Ways of waging war are advancing at an exponential rate and are becoming more insidious like the computer hacking attacks by one country upon another that are now commonly reported. Unmanned drones fly in and bomb with so-called precision however the collateral damage to the innocent bystanders still occurs.

This morning I read the following quotation from the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov:

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

I also am becoming aware of the concept of "cultural cancelling" fanned by the mind blowing communication power of social media.  If you don't like what someone says cancel them! Of course this has to be tempered by the stand we must make against hate type speech. We cannot allow blatant verbal and physical attacks on vulnerable people, for example, as manifest in racial discrimination. Also maybe it is acceptable to cancel the accolades that a statue of a slave trader might receive as a part of our history. Cultural cancelling has a positive and negative side and I see in my own country those who would cancel the pleas and protests from our indigenous Aboriginal people to be recognised in the Australian constitution and to have a special 'voice to parliament'. Surprise, surprise, they even want a treaty in a context of the 1788 colonial invasion of their lands as they perceive it to be. I pray that all this is achieved for them before I leave this mortal coil and at my age this is something that I contemplate a little more often than in the past.

All of the above sits in a context of how people will meet their basic needs in a future where the nature of work is unclear.

By now you will be exhausted or even offended by the picture I have painted.  My purpose is to declare that schools cannot solve these major issues, but they can produce graduates who believe in the power of the individual to make a difference, an individual who had the opportunity to study ethics at senior high school and first year university. I recommend that the study of ethics be compulsory at these levels, but not formally assessed as part of society's recognition of a need to prepare each student for the unknown.  Ethics will be a tool to enable better coping mechanisms in a context of the world described above. Ethics will provide a confidence in the young that they can cope with optimism and a true sense of humanity.

Now I've done it! Who knows how readers will react, but I must take the plunge. It is important in concluding that I note that contemporary curricula in Australia do provide opportunities to study ethics. I simply want to emphasise the importance of this field of learning.



May the Force be with you!


GD