The post-pandemic education sector is fast becoming more and more digitalised; learning in a more cyber-physical realm is more valid than ever as we venture forth into learning within a hybrid world.
How can we globally adapt the education system to this ever changing world in which we live?
The advancement of technology combines appropriately with the global shift towards a more digital, or hybrid, world. In terms of jobs and education, people are able to work and function effectively on a remote basis which opens up many alternative doors and opportunities. There is no reason why our future workers and generations cannot be educated effectively using the modern technological and digital options available to them.
The pandemic’s forced limitations on human movement facilitated a new movement of its own whereby the ‘digital nomad’, ‘WFH’ (working from home), online schooling, temporarily remote job roles, all became the new and accepted normal. That new normal has now become a staple part of life (without such restrictions being applied); with permanently remote job roles being created, children opting to remain in an online schooling capacity, and digital nomads roaming the earth as they work on the road, to name a few examples.
The future jobs that our current learners will be finding or seeking, though they may not have even been invented yet, will almost certainly involve some form of virtual, digital framework. We are not claiming to believe 100% in a ‘metaverse’ emerging, but technology, adaptation, and the nature in which we are evolving will certainly require our people to have a different kind of introduction to the working world other than that offered by a traditional school. For learners to have a strong foothold and grasp on the real world, they need more than being told to sit down, shut up, listen and learn. They need autonomy, agency and interaction with the world itself.
Online schooling has become a far more popular concept - not just accepted, but desired - as families become more nomadic, flexible or unwilling to be tied down to regular frameworks or timetables. The schematics of regular, traditional schools are not attractive for the current, nor future trends of the world. Where everyone has to do everything at the same time, complete courses at the same rate, achieve their goals at the same moment as their peers. It is unrealistic, especially if we are giving individuals the opportunity to pursue their own unique personalised educational path, as we do at BGA.
So, to give these kids a better chance, we need to step up and give them that opportunity, to be prepared, to be ‘in it to win it’ and open to any further ‘new normals’ that may come to fruition.
BGA’s goal is to offer learners a space to consider their personal path, discover who they are, what they want to be and help them along their way to achieving that. Education should be a support system; an open framework to encourage our future workforce and planet carers to find global solutions to keep this world functional beautiful for us humans. They do not flourish, nor bring anything beneficial to the world when they spend years of their lives being given an authoritarian box in which to fit. We should not want to mould our children into versions of the same thing but set them free to discover their own unique shape.
Let education be something that actually educates rather than dictates, and adheres to an evolving global future in a hybrid world.
Be Brave!