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Are we challenging the future?
or
Is the future challenging us?
Helsinki, April 2008
Henno Theisens, CERI/ OECD
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Schooling for Tomorrow
• Long term thinking is important especially in education:
–Pupils who start their education today will be working in 15 to 20 years time.
– Increasing complexity of educational systems necessitates longer term visions
• But educational policy making is often short term, responding to incidents and direct political pressures.
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Dealing with the future is
challenging…
“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University
Just before the 1929Wall St. Crash
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Really, really challenging…
“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”
Maréchal Ferdinand Foch, École Supérieure de Guerre
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Really, really, really challenging
En l’an 2000: in the year 2000
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The choice is therefore:
• To accept that long term planning is more or less meaningless and to only consider the short term
Or
• To try and think rigorously and imaginatively about the future without pretending full certainty and to find ways of handling uncertainty.
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Trends for the future
Many relevant trends, but today a focus on:
• Globalisation
• Technological change
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GLOBALISATION
Part one
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Increasing economic
globalisation
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China and India Catching Up
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The widening gap between richer
and poorer world regions
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
Western
Europe
US, Canada,
Australia,
New Zealand
Japan Latin America Eastern
Europe &
former USSR
Asia
(excluding
Japan)
Africa
1000
1820
1998
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More enter than leave OECD countries, with
substantial numbers now “foreign born”
-5
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Luxem
bourg
Austra
lia
Sw
itzerla
nd
New
Zeala
nd
Canada
Austria
Germ
any
Unite
d S
tate
s
Sw
eden
Belg
ium
Irela
nd
Neth
erla
nds
Gre
ece
Fra
nce
Unite
d K
ingdom
Norw
ay
Portu
gal
Denm
ark
Spain
Czech R
epublic
Slo
vak R
epublic
Fin
land
Hungary
Italy
Turk
ey
Pola
nd
Stock of foreign-born as a percentage of
population (2004)
Annual net migration per 1 000 population
(1990 - 2004)
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Increasing numbers of international
students in higher education
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TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
Part two
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Computers becoming rapidly
faster and more powerful
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Towards universal access to a
home computer?
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Number of websites worldwide
increasing rapidly
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
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Growing access to broadband
Internet connection
0
5
10
15
20
25
2001 2002-Q2 2002 2003-Q2 2003 2004-Q2 2004 2005-Q2 2005 2006-Q2 2006
Canada United Kingdom
France Japan
United States Germany
OECD Italy
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Massive growth of Wikipedia
0
1,000,000
2,000,000
3,000,000
4,000,000
5,000,000
6,000,000
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
All languages
English language
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So in conclusion
• Yes the future is challenging us.
• Most educational systems on the whole are not challenging the future yet, but there are examples of schools that do.
• But how many challenges can one system deal with realistically?
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