Mike Douse And Philip Uys

The Global School Mike Douse And Philip Uys

We as a world have learned a great deal from the economic and technological phases of globalisation thus far and, provided we reflect upon those lessons, possess the basic concepts for the more challenging phase of envisaging, constructing and maintaining a universal educational structure, necessitated and enabled by our integrated world system. This - The Global School - will indubitally come to pass: precisely how and when it does so, and exactly what form it should best take, remain to be determined - and constitute the pivotal theme of this book. Education cannot overcome all of society's problems nor may it cure the multiplicity of maladies wounding our imperfect world. But what it can and must do is to provide the best possible setting wherein those who teach and those who learn may encounter and alleviate their own inadequacies, recognising as they do so the common challenges besetting all of humanity and, through that universal connectivity, realising that, as humans, our differences are exceeded by our similarities. For this is the Digital Age, classified by some as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The world, countries within it, institutions within and across those countries, and thus people's lives are being - and will, exponentially and largely unpredictably, continue to be - dramatically transformed by ever-more-rapidly progressing technology, in effect by Digitisation. The participative connectedness of all learners is something more than enabling development: it is development. But it has yet, with universally-enhancing, equity-accomplishing and profoundly humane consequences, explicitly to occur. Recognition of the magnitude of on-going and future economic and labour market changes, within the broader context of personal and socio-cultural actuality generally, necessitates and enables across-the-board transformation in the objectives, content and approaches of education. Education cannot explicitly prepare people for situations in which they will need frequently to upgrade their skills, especially when the nature of those skills are unknowable. Rather, the love of learning and the ability to learn, to handle information expertly ('computer comfortability' - call it what you will) and to master digital tools may well be amongst the competencies required.