Thanks (I think) to the NAEE weekly round up for the info on the latest UNESCO wheeeeeeze. It's another research commission; this time on the Futures of Education. Note the plural. The commissioners seem a random selection from the great 'n' good of UNESCOland.
UNESCO says that its initiative "aims to rethink education and shape the future. The initiative is catalyzing a global debate on how knowledge, education and learning need to be reimagined in a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and precarity". Precarity!
In November 2021 the commission aims to publish a "forward-looking vision of what education and learning might yet become and offer a policy agenda. The Futures of Education: Learning to Become initiative will catalyze a global debate on how knowledge and learning can shape the future of humanity and the planet."
A point about what's proposed is the absence of any mention of ESD. Now isn't that odd, especially given this:
"The Commission is to take into consideration recent geopolitical shifts, accelerated environmental degradation and climate change, changing patterns of human mobility, and the exponential pace of scientific and technological innovation. At the same time, the report should envisage and analyse the multiple possible futures of technological, social, economic, and environmental disruption and how education might both affect and be affected by these futures."
There's no mention of sustainability / sustainable development either. Is this the end of UNESCO's championing of ESD or just the latest skirmish within the organisation between pro- and anti-ESD factions? The report may tell us.
Respond