While the internet has opened exciting new opportunities for citizens to learn at every stage of their life, it has also vastly increased the knowledge turnover rate. In 1900, it was estimated that human knowledge doubled approximately every century (this is known as the Knowledge Doubling Curve), whereas today on average human knowledge is doubling every 13 months. IBM predicts that the internet of things will lead to the doubling of knowledge every 12 hours.
If it is no longer possible to learn at school all the knowledge you will need for the rest of your life, then how you learn becomes more important than what you learn, even more so when you consider the rapid evolutions that digital technology is bringing to the way we live. It has modified both the tools and platforms that support learning and knowledge access, replacing the traditional chalk and talk mode of knowledge transmission with interactive information and communication tools including and combining websites, e-mail exchanges, chat rooms, video conferencing, webinars, apps, robots, drones, virtual reality and more. Printed books are being replaced by ebooks, and the encyclopaedia by Wikipedia and the like.
Reshaping the curriculum, updating learning approaches
Besides raising the ever-increasing challenge for learners to sift through a constant information overload and sort the true from the false (see Fact sheet on “Media and information literacy”), these new means of learning and the rapid turnover of knowledge have had to be accompanied by big changes in what and when we learn. Back in the 1990s, former European Commission President Jacques Delors proposed restructuring education around four essential pillars as a means of preparing young people to meet the challenges of our increasingly digital world.
These four pillars are: learning to learn, to do, to be and to live together1.
This idea has been echoed by other educators before and since Delors, and the internet offers an abundance of tools and platforms that are making anywhere-anytime learning a powerful reality, though usually alongside the traditional education systems rather than being integrated into them. The four areas of competence of the Council of Europe’s “butterfly” framework underpin the four pillars (Figure 7).
Figure 7: Four pillars of education underpinned by digital citizenship competence model
Most recently, the European Commission’s IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies) has suggested that the curriculum should be built on five key concepts if schools are to cater to the real needs of future citizens: information, communication, creativity, problem solving and responsibility. While the debate around school curricula rages, one further disruptive stakeholder has crept in seemingly unnoticed and is transforming the face of learning: technology. Technology has found its way into the hands of our infants who, already adept internet users by the time they enter kindergarten, are skipping important developmental phases that could have a big impact on their future life.
As children and young people grapple their way through a blurred online-offline reality, bringing their friendships and disputes via their tablet or mobile phone into the classroom, and their schoolyard fears and fantasies into their bed at night, “learning to be” and to “live together” (i.e. values and attitudes) are becoming ever more necessary. And we are gradually beginning to see “emotional intelligence” competences such as “self-awareness”, “social awareness” and “relationship management” rear their heads in formal education. At the opposite end of the scale, the realisation is dawning that children who learn to code have a better understanding of the place of technology in their life, and its limits. This has pushed coding to the forefront as a must-have for the 21st century digital citizen.
Where does creativity fit in?
Being an active citizen, whether in school, among friends or in on- or offline communities, means being a participative citizen able to put forward ideas, formulate opinions and bring original perspectives to any debate. This requires mastery of a range of higher cognitive skills, from analysing data sources to sorting, reflecting on and interpreting information. These are all higher cognitive skills developed through exploration-driven learning and experience rather than through transmission of knowledge. They rely on a certain level of creativity, which is a key ingredient in problem solving. They also rely on the capacity of young people to express themselves coherently and listen to the opinion of others.
But how do we foster creativity, self-expression and learning through experience in schools that define learning through a standard mainstream curriculum and covert evaluation models requiring students to fulfil external objectives rather than their self-set goals? Creativity and meaningful artistic expression have always been important drivers of social progress, but how do we encourage children to exercise their imagination when an endless palette of entertainment is at their fingertips 24/7, at the simple click of a mouse or swipe of a screen?
1 Delors J. et al. (1996), “Learning: the treasure within”, UNESCO, Paris
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
