By: Jeanette Teh
Education is the key to solving the world’s problems. That was the clear message from Sunny Varkey, Founder and Chairman of GEMS Education, at the Global Education Forum this past Saturday at the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai.
The fourth annual two-day education forum, held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, hosted 1600 delegates from 110 countries, including 20 education ministers, with 145 speakers and 61 public sessions.
The sessions were comprised of different formats including debates held at an Oxford-styled debate chamber, teacher masterclasses taking place in a ‘classroom’, EdTalk breakout rooms, panel sessions, and Meet the Mentor sessions, which were hour-long question and answer meetings with mentors such as Mr. Varkey, CNN GPS host and Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, Ms. Irina Bokova, the UNESCO Director-General, and Mr. Andreas Schleicher, the OECD Director of Education and Skills.
Global Education Crisis
At the opening address of what Mr. Zakaria called the “Davos or Oscars of Education”, he explained that globalization and technology are the two great forces shaping our world today, and those who do not have access to education or capital will find themselves losing out on opportunities. Because growth is not shared equally, this causes economic, political and cultural anxiety.
Mr. Varkey also described the “global education crisis”, lamenting the fact that despite the Millennium Development Goals pledging fifteen years ago that every child will get an education, there are still a staggering 58 million children around the world who do not attend primary school while half a billion others are failing in school.
This crisis has been exacerbated by the Syrian war which has damaged a quarter of the schools in the country, leaving three million children without education.
For him, “none of the other goals can be achieved without education. There is no end to poverty or disease without education, no solution to climate change. In fact, there is no hope without education.”
Yet, the solution to this global education crisis is “simple and proven — teachers who are well-respected, well-trained and well-paid”, he said to resounding applause.
Continuing, he stated that “we must treasure teachers. Teachers build bridges from the present to the future, taking us from where we are to where we want to be, turning our dreams to reality”.
This is precisely why he launched the USD 1 Million Global Teacher Prize – to shine a spotlight on great teachers whom he thanked and celebrated for the great work they do every day.
Technological Revolution
There is no question that technology has completely revolutionized our lives and Mr. Zakaria reminded us that all the technological devices we consider essential today did not exist in 1990.
The speed at which technology changes and is adopted is remarkable, a point later emphasized in the EdTalk session by Udemy CEO Dennis Yang when he described how it took 75 years for the telephone to reach 100 million users, the Internet seven years, while the mobile game Candy Crush only one year to do so.
With all the advances of technology, it should be used to “support new inquiry-based pedagogies where students are not recipients, but active participants, make feedback faster and more granular, and to create powerful networks for teachers to share and enrich teaching methods”, Mr. Schleicher urged.
Further, he continued that “education has to be about values, providing young people with a compass and navigational skills to find their own ways through complex and ambiguous world” and to think across disciplines because “the modern world no longer rewards you for what you know, but for what you can do”.
Educators should help students manage knowledge and see the world through different perspectives and cultivate critical thinking, problem solving, social, and emotional skills.
Yet despite many teachers who know this, rote learning still prevails in many institutions around the world, likely because less than a third of teachers believe that innovative teaching will be recognized.
A later debate also asked whether educators are becoming “slaves to testing and standardized assessments”, which may contribute to the lack of innovation in the classroom.
Teaching students for jobs that don’t yet exist
Mr. Schleicher emphasized that today’s teachers need to prepare students for “rapid change more than ever before, to use technology not yet invented to solve social problems that have not yet arrived, and prepare them for jobs that have not yet been created.”
In fact, “65% of grade school students will have jobs that don’t even yet exist”, as Mr. Yang later informed his audience.
It is no wonder that a gap exists where graduates can’t find jobs while employers can’t find people with skills they need.
How then can we possibly prepare students for a future we can’t predict?
The answer simply is life-long learning.
EdTech: Using technology to educate
Learning need not only take place in formal, brick and mortar institutions, but can also be taken online such as at Udemy, the online learning marketplace which educates more than 10 million students in courses as varied as computer programming to yoga.
Leveraging technology, Udemy provides access to students from around the world who would not ordinarily be able to be taught by international instructors while providing flexible on-demand, any time, any place learning.
Because of the ever-changing world in which we live, “employers are looking for employees who have the ability to learn something new because they can’t predict five years from now what your job will entail”, Mr. Yang concluded.
This article was originally published on March 17th 2016 at http://www.gulfbusiness.com.
Jeanette Teh is a legal and corporate trainer, adjunct (assistant) professor, non-practicing lawyer, writer, coach, and founder of Kaleidoscopic Sky. You can find more about her at http://linkedin.com/in/jeanette-teh-601115.
Image courtesy of geralt from https://pixabay.com/en/learn-child-forward-view-road-sign-2004898/