Preparing for a Confusing Future Complexity, Warm Data and Education
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Nora Bateson
I published this piece in September 2018 in the World Academy of Arts and Sciences Journal special issue on education. As we enter this confusing moment of Covid-19 isolation and systems change, it seems to me to be a moment to rethink most of the ossified patterns of the last centuries, and break free. Education is certainly at the core of this change. This is a long read, but maybe you have time…
Starting Monday March 23rd, will be doing a series of calls online for parents interested in mutual learning with their kids in discovery of complexity…Since the schools are closed anyway, we might as well completely rethink what education can be.
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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Putting the world back together now from the fragmented, decontextualized and silo-ed bits it has been broken into is a challenge that rests on the possibility of intergenerational collaborative exploration. To form and find interconnections will require humility and a new kind of attention to interdependent processes in complex systems. New sensitivity will be needed, new perception, new language, new ideas. If the human species is to continue, the way in which we consider ourselves in relation to each other, and the environment must evolve.
Imagine for a moment what it must be like to be a child in this era — looking into the future, what awaits you?
Those of us who are over 25 probably cannot actually conceptualize the horizon that is in view for today’s kids. When they are asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” — what should they say? What are the current options? A programmer, a doctor, crypto-broker, an artist, a YouTube star, an ocean restorer? What kind of society will they be living in? And, what sort of education can they be given to prepare them for a future we cannot even imagine? More than an exploration of education, this is a recognition that the education system exists within and between other systems of employment, economics, culture, media, health, religion and within…
