What Education, What School for the Near Future?

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to offer a well argumented discussion, based on my own and others’ research, about the desire for and the difficulty in making today’s schools and education fit for the future. The paper starts with an autobiographical note about my interest in thinking about the future; it goes on to discuss the contribution prospective studies can make in the possible evolution of education; it carries on by looking at the contribution of policy and political initiatives to transform 20th century schools into 21st century ones; finally, in the last two sections, it finishes by explicitly stating the inertias and those characteristics of today’s schools that would need to change in the present-future, and the difficulties this entails.
The most evident result of this paper is the ascertainment that there are many futures, and that all of them are already here. The future greatly depends on what we are doing (or not doing) today. The future is not yet written, but it cannot be built from a void. Who we will be and what we can do tomorrow are inevitably shaped by the actions we do or do not take today. This is why, only by identifying the conditions of our present, and deliberating about what we think needs to be preserved, what needs to be improved, and what needs to be reinvented, will it be possible to achie ve a different - and let’s hope better - future.