Ed Futures: A Collection of Short Stories on the Future of Education

By Stavros Yiannouka, Deena Newaz and Vesta Gheibi

Throughout history, we have been trying to grasp, celebrate, and even reject advances in technology. Numerous science fiction films and literary works have paid homage to the possible futures looming. However, such futures and technologies present interesting situations for us in education. The community of educators, policymakers and technologists are worried by thoughts of children interacting with intelligent robots instead of teachers, and facing permanent unemployment because of automation. However, the future cannot be reduced to this fear and Ed Futures is an attempt to speculate worlds where education and technology are brought to life by very human connections. These worlds break into parts of society where we least expect it, and aims to open this important conversation on the impact of new technologies on education to a larger audience through storytelling. By speculating various futures in each story and making bare the politics of a changing world, our hope is to create a starting point for anyone and everyone to engage in creating a responsible future of learning.

What is your learning future?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728393971

Stavros Yiannouka

Brought together by a passion for science fiction and a hungry curiosity for emerging technologies, Stavros N Yiannouka, Deena Newaz, and Vesta Gheibi came together to speculate the future of education. Stavros leads WISE as the CEO of the global think tank from Qatar Foundation. He actively engages with decision-makers around the world to encourage best practices in education systems that are geared towards a more inclusive future. Deena Newaz designs content for youth development programs and coaches education initiatives in the education and development sector. Vesta Gheibi produces content that spreads ideas worth sharing in education. Together they have extensive knowledge of the global education sector, and they have experiences from all around the world. They hail from Cyprus, Bangladesh and Iran, and have lived in Singapore, the UK, Australia, and Qatar.

Book preview

ED

FUTURES

A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES ON

THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION

STAVROS YIANNOUKA

DEENA NEWAZ

VESTA GHEIBI

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© 2019 Stavros Yiannouka, Deena Newaz, Vesta Gheibi. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  10/22/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-9396-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-9395-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-9397-1 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

To the everyday heroes, the teachers, social entrepreneurs, and learners of all ages who we have been privileged to meet through our work

To our colleagues who make working at WISE not only a privilege but also a pleasure

To our families and friends, without whom we would not be who, what, and where we are today

Contents

Introduction

Trials

Labours

A World Of Contradictions

I.      The Resilient Child

II.     Homecoming

III.   A Hyphenated Existence

Not On My Own

Conclusion

Introduction

H ow often have you come across an article or a quote where someone is talking about the rapid rate of technological advances? Our relationship with technology is something that we constantly find ourselves analysing in an effort to come to terms with its implications for ourselves and the societies we inhabit. What makes our era of technological change particularly interesting when compared to earlier times is that our relationship with technology is fast becoming quite personal, intimate even, and this may have profound consequences on the way we evolve as human beings. Moreover, it isn’t the kind of relationship our family and friends can easily teach us about; nor does there seem to be an intuitive behavioural response built into our genes.

We’ve had a long history with technology. Long before digital screens and code, since humans first started making tools for hunting and creating fire, we have been obsessed with advancing the tools in our hands to improve our way of living.

Not every tool, perhaps even no tool, has always been used as the original discoverer or creator intended. What was the intended primary purpose of fire? Was it warmth or protection? When did it occur to humans that they could also use fire to cook food?

Fast-forward to the modern world of infinite products and tools around us, and the unintended uses and consequences are almost guaranteed. Take the Slinky, for example, which was originally invented for stabilising devices on moving ships, or Coca-Cola, created to alleviate drug addiction. More recently, we appropriated text messaging from a tool used by technicians to become the most widespread mode of communication in the world. Keri Facer, author and professor at the University of Bristol talks about this relationship best. When technologies are released, they are adopted and appropriated within existing social values, structures and expectations; they are shaped and reshaped by beta testers, early adopters and marketers; and they come to mean different things and be used for different purposes by different people.

In most corners of this world, it is almost impossible to analyse society without the added layer of technology. With every new device or every software development, we are incrementally changing our behaviour and, as a result, our values. The impact such advances have on our own human behaviour bewilders us. This bewilderment is often expressed with shock, confusion, or denial and sometimes with concern over how quickly emerging technologies are outpacing our ability to keep up. When we look to the future, some of us are excited by the myriad possibilities, but many others are anxious or even paranoid with notions of darker motives at play.

The future isn’t a fixed point that we will inevitably reach. The future is a work in progress. It is continuously happening to us at this very moment. The future is nothing more than the culmination of the past. It is the sum of all our collective thoughts, words, and actions and their consequences, intended or otherwise.

The fact that the future is constantly being written and rewritten provides us with an opportunity to influence its trajectory. If we believe that, as conscious beings, we have a degree of agency, then it is incumbent on us to determine how best to invest our collective efforts in the service of human flourishing. Moreover, with greater connectivity, increasing global wealth, and more access to transformative technologies than ever before, perhaps for the first time in our history, the future is not something to be managed by the few, but can be actively shaped by all of us.

At QF WISE our primary focus is education because we believe that it is a force to be reckoned with. Education is at the core of individuals and groups who challenge and create progressive futures. The state of education as it is today encompasses all of the successes and failures of our economies, politics, and societies. Education is the tool with which we can build agency in the face of uncertainty. We believe in the effort to mobilise a global movement around quality education in the broadest possible sense to create systemic positive change. In our global experience, we see education as a resilient driver of human progress, prosperity, and well-being. Education also serves as a springboard to question conventional wisdom about what it means to be human and our purpose on this planet. Through education, we question our own human behaviour, how we learn, and notions of success and completion. Keri Facer expresses this notion elegantly: Ideas of the future matter in education. They matter for the assumptions upon which we build our institutions and the stories that we tell students in our care. As new technologies and political realities are transforming our present and the future in elusive ways, education must be added to this equation to prepare individuals and societies to understand, adapt, and thrive in these changing times.

Taking into consideration the fast pace of changing technology, there is a stark difference to the rate of change in education systems, as it faces the inertia to change and integrate technologies. Perhaps then, we need to place our attention on the social aspect rather than the technology itself. In fact, there is an urgent call for sociologists to partake in the between education and technology. In a paper by Keri Facer and Neil Selwyn, they point out that it is essential for sociology to contribute to educational debates and develop the field, because technologies are not neutral but political … they are carriers for assumptions and ideas about the future of society.

What about the promise of educational empowerment to diminish inequality? The compounding effect of technology innovations and weakening governance can, in fact, widen education inequality. We know that many of the ubiquitous technologies can have design features in place to nudge certain behaviours; and so this raises an ethical question as to the motives of the creators and the technology’s influence on users. Artificial intelligence already exists in many forms, even interfacing with our daily use as we scroll through our newsfeeds. However, as the technology develops there will be a growing number of threats and opportunities that must be accounted for. More people will join in the discussion and ask, What are the opportunities presented by these advances? What are the threats and how do we overcome them? What biases do these systems have and how could they shape our lives?

Ed Futures is our thought experiment using speculative storytelling to explore new and potentially uncomfortable ideas in order to provoke discussion and further the imagination of what education might look like. Storytelling is a creative exercise to explore possible education futures and the actors and resources that will play a part in it. In doing so, we are teasing out the implications of not only technology, but also pedagogies and philosophies that affect education and, through that, our collective realities. Furthermore, as part of the education sector, we often feel that conversations around education reform for the future remain elusive and inaccessible to people outside the sector. The series of stories that follow are an attempt by us to mediate and democratise the conversation around education and technology.

Humans have had a long relationship with storytelling, from the large animals depicted in the 35,000-year-old Lascaux Cave paintings, to the first written epics of Gilgamesh and the Iliad, and onwards to our own era with The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. For Native Americans, stories are so integral to the culture that, for every question asked, there is a story with which to respond. Reflecting on our human behaviours, our imaginations, and our history is an anchor for human progress. The importance of stories in making sense of the human condition reminds us of just how connected we are to one another and to our past. It is the responsibility of storytelling to shine a light back onto our own world and reveal possible trajectories. It allows us to ruminate on what we want in our future and what we want to avoid.

With Ed Futures we are not inventing a new universe; in fact, we’re looking at what exists today and extrapolating it, particularly with artificial intelligence and what its various trajectories could be. We are presenting what we think are bold and provocative scenarios for the future of education and looking at how we as parents, teachers, and learners can ensure children are provided with opportunities and access to the relevant, creative, collaborative, and challenging learning environments they need to succeed. By illustrating extreme situations and highlighting the promise and perils inherent in them, we hope to assist with creating recommendations for education policymakers and practitioners. We hope that, by introducing speculative fiction in education, we can imagine various education futures that are more encompassing of the actual stories of the everyday heroes from around the world that we are privileged to meet through our work.

The stories in this series embody the various contradictions, ethical dilemmas, hopes, and aspirations of the characters and how education in their unique worlds gives them the tools (or not) to deal with adversity in life. Although the stories focus on education and education technologies, they ultimately speak to the human element and what it means to learn and succeed in changing times. We invite our readers to put their imaginations to practice, because our ideas of the future matter for the kind of world we want to create today.

TRIALS

Stavros Yiannouka

I

A ris sat motionless on the hard wooden chair in the holding cell of the Attica District courthouse. He wore his uniform—a navy blue and white bodysuit emblazoned with the image of a rather googly-eyed owl—signalling that he was enrolled at the elite Platonic Academy, one of the most exclusive educational institutions on the planet. It had been his mother’s idea to appear in court wearing his uniform, although he wasn’t entirely sure why?

There was going to be no one, in the conventional sense, to whom to signal his membership of an elite educational institution—at least not on the day. Perhaps his mother wanted him decked out for posterity —the proceedings would be recorded and forever archived on Jurisnet, which was, among other things, the digital repository of all civil and criminal cases tried since the system came online in the mid 2070s. Or perhaps it was because old habits died hard. Since time immemorial, it had been the habit of those involved in court proceedings to appear looking their best. Appearances mattered in those days. Judge and jury could be swayed to favour the accused, particularly someone with Aris’s pedigree. Standing 1.95 metres tall, with wavy brown hair, hazel eyes, and a perfectly proportioned chiselled Grecian nose and chin, Aris looked every bit the demigod his parents had genetically enhanced him to be.

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It would have been obvious to anyone in those days that Aris was an intelligent young man from a good family, with wealth and connections —wasta as his Arab friends would say. With a bright future ahead of him, he would most probably have walked away from all of this with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

Aris had studied the workings of early justice systems as part of his introduction to jurisprudence. He understood only too well the many flaws and inherent unfairness of these earlier systems and why, with advances in technology and a deeper understanding of the workings of the human mind, it became possible and indeed imperative to design and deploy a fairer, influence-free justice system. Of course, now that he found himself at the receiving end of that system, he couldn’t help but pine for what his grandfather Aris senior called οι παλιοί καλοί καιροί, translated literally as the old good ages or, more accurately, the good old days.

Those days were long gone, even for the scion of one of the world’s wealthiest shipping families, whose robotic fleets trawled not only the oceans of the Earth but also the expanse of outer space ferrying ores and bulk cargo to and from Mars, the asteroid belt, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. His parents had planned to send him on a trip to Mars to celebrate his coming of age. A trip to Mars had become a rite of passage for young adults of Aris’s caste. Not only did their families have the wealth to afford to pay for the passage—or, in Aris’s case, to own an interplanetary space-yacht—but with genetic enhancements and nanomed technology extending life expectancy to two centuries, they could also afford the time.

It wasn’t that time or, more precisely, lack thereof, was much of a thing anymore—at least not in the way it used to be during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Time was pretty much what most people had. Life expectancy averaged around a century or so, even for the lower castes, who could only avail themselves of the basic package of genetic enhancements and rudimentary nanomeds made available through the now ubiquitous universal healthcare systems. Housing and a basic income were also universal entitlements, and so was schooling. Most people didn’t see much of a need for schooling anymore, now that jobs were a curiosity and a hobby for the few, rather than a necessity for the many. With automation and artificial intelligence, and once humanity had fully harnessed the power of