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New book explores how schools can prepare students for an uncertain future
LAWRENCE — As technology evolves and changes the world at a faster pace than ever before, two veteran educators have written a new book that explores how schools can prepare young people for a globalized future that is still taking shape. “Learning for Uncertainty: Teaching Students How to Thrive in a Rapidly Evolving World” is co-written by Yong Zhao, Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education & Human Sciences at the University of Kansas.
Don’t ignore deeper ‘Plague Year’ anniversary context, professor says
LAWRENCE – As the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic coincides with the 300th anniversary of the publication of Daniel Defoe’s novel “A Journal of the Plague Year,” a University of Kansas professor of English who specializes in literature of that era said there are even stronger continuities between the book and our own time than were first apparent.
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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings
New book explores how schools can prepare students for an uncertain future
LAWRENCE — As technology evolves and changes the world at a faster pace than ever before, two veteran educators have written a new book that explores how schools can prepare young people for a globalized future that is still taking shape.
“Learning for Uncertainty: Teaching Students How to Thrive in a Rapidly Evolving World,” by G. Williamson McDiarmid and Yong Zhao, explores how today’s education system is not preparing students to be citizens of a changing world but that educators can prepare students for the future, even when they’re not sure exactly what it will be.
“If I tell you I’m going to prepare you for the future, that implies I know what the future is,” said Zhao, Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education & Human Sciences at KU. “But the future is uncertain. The main idea of the book may not be new, but it is interesting and vital to think about.
What is the future? We need to think about, ‘If we live in a world where technology is changing and can make our lives better or worse, what kind of education do we need?’”
The COVID-19 pandemic largely changed day-to-day education. Students and teachers were forced to rely on technology to learn and teach from home.
There were varying levels of success, but the pandemic illustrated the need for educators and students to adapt to new technology. Just as today’s school is different than it was just two years ago, the workforce students will enter will continue to change as well, as technology changes or eliminates some jobs while creating new ones that educators cannot yet envision.
The opening chapters of “Learning for Uncertainty” examine why the future is so hard to predict as well as the bright side and dark side of what may come to pass in coming years. For example, social media has enabled people to communicate in ways previously unimaginable and allowed students to access knowledge on their own, but it has also fostered mistrust among fellow citizens and proliferation of misinformation. It has also allowed big companies to compile huge amounts of personal information about individuals.
McDiarmid and Zhao illustrate how educators need to prepare students to be citizens of a global world. By teaching students how to be curious, creative and make rational decisions, educators can produce young people able to engage in society as well as understand and defend democracy and liberty.
Students able to thrive in that world will be socially and mentally flexible, good at communication and teamwork. Those skills, plus being able to take criticism, attend to diverse voices and being open to continuous learning will be essential, they wrote.
“We are losing that piece of ‘How do you live in a democracy and defend its values?’” Zhao said. “We also talk about geopolitics and how you can help students live as a citizen, not just of the United States, but of the world. You have to live with other people – it’s inevitable. We can’t just retreat or go fight. We have to change how we see students as global citizens and help them make rational decisions.”
The authors also explore how today’s educational system is still rooted in preparing students for the economy of several decades ago. Through technology, students today are much more capable to find information on their own, determine what they are interested in learning, develop “side hustles” and change norms in ways previously unimagined. The authors then explore ways educators and schools can embrace those potentials and help develop such skills instead of clinging to the traditional roles of classrooms and curriculum. One of the most critical ways to do that, the authors wrote, is to recognize the unique profiles and abilities of students, then foster those strengths instead of trying to provide the exact same education to every student.
A pivot toward the future is necessary where schools do not over-rely on assessing literacy and numeracy with supplemental classes in sciences, physical education and other traditional subjects, the authors wrote. Instead, schools should hold on to those still relevant subjects while preparing students to prepare for a world challenged by climate change, inequality and geopolitical conflict. McDiarmid and Zhao then wrote how the pandemic showed the urgent need to be able to embrace changing technology and argued that schools should not abandon it as they reopen. Educators need not worry that technology is replacing them or changing their curriculum but instead embrace that students have tremendous access to information from around the world, so they can guide students in taking ownership of their learning via technology.
Finally, the authors look to how educators can embrace such a future. They intend not to provide definitive solutions but rather stimulate conversation on how students could be educated for an uncertain future. Changes and ideas for how to achieve it will be needed in all areas of education, including schools, curriculum, pedagogy, opportunities to learn, assessment and policymaking.
Zhao and McDiarmid, Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Distinguished Chair of Education at East China Normal University, both have multiple decades working in education and higher education in institutions around the world and, combined, have written 34 books and more than 150 journal articles. Their newest book, part of the Routledge Leading Change series, is intended to contextualize the change that is happening in the world now, and the transformation needed in education to prepare students for the world they will inherit.
“We are in a very interesting and challenging time. This is a great time to make big changes. Changes can take place in what students should learn, how they should learn, and where learning should take place,” the authors write. “Schools and teachers should also be making changes. And of course, assessment needs changes as well. The big message is that schooling can no longer continue as it has been. Students have to be more in charge of their learning. And schools need massive transformation.”
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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman
Don’t ignore deeper ‘Plague Year’ anniversary context, professor says
LAWRENCE – As the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic coincides with the 300th anniversary of the publication of Daniel Defoe’s novel “A Journal of the Plague Year,” a University of Kansas professor of English who specializes in literature of that era said there are even stronger continuities between the book and our own time than were first apparent.
Yes, Anna Neill said, foreshadowing our pandemic time, Defoe detailed the horror as the bubonic plague ravaged London, revealing its disparate impact according to social class, breaking supply chains and “providing opportunities for charlatans and scammers and people dealing in fake news about origins and treatment.”
But Neill said there are other, unspoken connections between Defoe’s plague years and our own.
She said that Defoe was a small child during the 1665-66 outbreak of plague in London and that his book was not published until 1722. So Defoe clearly relied on official records and the memories of others for his plot.
“Why did he think this story about a 50-year-old catastrophe would sell? We have to think about what was going on in Britain at that time,” Neill said, “and that included all kinds of things that caused similar experiences of uncertainty and instability. There was the fear of an invasion to restore a Catholic monarch. But the one I think is really significant here is that, two years earlier, Britain and particularly London experienced what was known as the South Sea Bubble. That was a financial bubble involving the South Sea Company, which had been formed in 1711 for two reasons – one, to absorb the national debt, and two, to oversee the transportation of slaves to the Americas.”
“This is the kind of thing we’re all familiar with, right? People buying up shares, and then the bubble collapsing, in part due to insider trading. People lost their fortunes, and the nation risked becoming insolvent. And that, in turn, meant it might give the Catholic pretender to the throne a chance to come back to invade and really succeed.
“So the fears that people experienced during that plague and that Defoe is writing about in ‘A Journal’ would seem very real to his readers — things like the collapse of livelihoods and the exposure to unscrupulous people who are profiting off of financial uncertainty and the credulity of others. So it seems likely to me that the bubble – and by association the British Atlantic slave trade — is the context in which he’s writing.”
Neill said, “One always needs to read the history of empire in text like this.”
In this case, it’s noteworthy that the narrator of “Plague Year,” known as H.F., is an entrepreneur who is implicated in the slave trade.
“It is important to be aware that when we’re reading a story and citing it as relevant for our COVID times, we should be thinking less about parallels than about the ways that the past has shaped and brought about our present moment,” Neill said.
“When H.F. is describing the terrible suffering of plague victims, he’s not talking about the suffering that’s being inflicted on the bodies of Africans who have been captured and transported.
“So there’s a silence there that is as important as what is said, if not more important, and ignoring that history as we read ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ is perpetuating that silence, notably in our COVID moment, which is manifest in global vaccine inequality. You could trace that back to the slave trade and to the impoverishment of regions of West Africa.”
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