Roger Broadie and Mal Lee are embarking on the quest to identify the major trends and issues that they believe will impact on the nature of schooling in 2050.
The late management guru, Peter Drucker, very wisely remarked
- Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window
- The best way to predict the future is to create it.
We will limit our quest to the identifying the megatrends on course to markedly impact the nature of schooling in 28 years, and the major issues school decision makers worldwide will likely have address it they are to create the desired schools.
The great benefit of Naisbitt’s seminal, and immensely popular 1984 publication on Megatrends was that it provided the general reader a succinct and clear appreciation of the trends likely to impact both society in general and its organisations.
It is well worth a revisit to appreciate how prescient was much the work, and its continued validity today.
That is what we hope, in our own humble way, we can do for global schooling.
One of the oft forgotten realities is that the ‘grammar of schooling’ worldwide is remarkably similar.
So too is the way the young of today’s digital and increasingly networked world use and learn with the digital 24/7/365 outside the school walls.
Our plan is to identify the similarities, the global trends, the philosophical and political flashpoints, and the issues to be addressed in shaping the desired schools.
As the digital evolution and transformation accelerates and impacts near every part of society school leaders in the next couple of decades will be expected to adapt to the evolving scene, while at the same time contending with ‘political masters’ who will invariably wish to maintain control of ‘their schools’.
It should make for an interesting challenge.
Between us we’ll draw on over 100 years of experience with schools and several decades of writings and research on the digital evolution and transformation of schooling and the education of the young.
Over time we intend inviting colleagues and interested readers to contribute to the thinking and finally drawing together of our read of the scene