Mal Lee
Oh, wise ones
A national policy question for a group highly versed in the impact of the digital.
The scenario
Developed nations have for the first time in human history a near universally digitally connected young – with considerable agency over their 24/7/365 use of the digital – who, with the support of their digitally connected families have naturally grown being digital. A similar uptake in connectivity is happening at pace in the underdeveloped and undeveloped worlds (ITU, 2017).
Governments and schools have played no real part in that burgeoning connectivity or the growing of being digital.
Developed nations seeking to grow their digital economies unwittingly have in their youth being digital a vast, largely untapped human resource – on trend to naturally evolve and grow.
If successfully built upon nationally it could go a long way to ensuring the nation stays or moves increasingly to the fore.
The resource has grown naturally and largely unseen over the last twenty plus years outside the school walls – totally unplanned, a natural outcome of the Digital Revolution.
The question for you – can nations accommodate the development and consciously build upon it in an astute national education strategy?
Can highly competitive economies afford not too?
Can governments that want to control and micro manage every facet of schooling accommodate the natural unplanned seemingly chaotic evolution – where the young have embraced a mode of learning with the digital antithetical to the school approach?
We know exceptional schools, with maverick heads can
But can every school, every head, every school administrator, every tertiary educator accommodate planned, structured and unplanned laissez faire learning?
Can highly inflexible, insular linear hierarchical Industrial Age schools provide a learning culture that accommodates the digitally empowered young? Are the legacy systems of the developed societies too hard to change?
Would most governments, schools and tertiary educators even want to change?
Do nations adopt a way forward – shock horror – that like now by-passes formal schooling?
Do we have to wait for the parents get angry before real change occurs?
Be interested in the thoughts of the wise – even those enjoying summer
Folk can email Mal at – mallee@mac.com