OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES
        On Education in the  
        21st Century
         RICHARD WATSON | LECTURER AND FUTURIST
                     An essay commissioned by the NSW Department of Education
           ON EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY
            ABOUT THE AUTHOR
            Richard Watson is the author 
            of Digital Vs. Human (Scribe, 
            Melbourne, 2016). He was born in 
            England, but has lived in Australia 
            and has children brought up under 
            both systems.
                                               EDUCATION: FUTURE FRONTIERS is an initiative of the 
                                               NSW Department of Education exploring the implications of 
                                               developments in AI and automation for education. As part of 
                                               the Education: Future Frontiers Occasional Paper series, the 
                                               Department has commissioned essays by distinguished authors 
                                               to stimulate debate and discussion about AI, education and 21st 
                                               century skill needs. The views expressed in these essays are solely 
                                               those of the authors.
                                      Education: Future Frontiers   |  Occasional Paper Series
                                                   2
               ON EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY
                     here’s a scene in the classic Woody Allen                     THE ONLY THING WE CAN 
              Tmovie Annie Hall where the nine-year-old                       SAY WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY 
                     Alvy Singer has been taken to see his doctor                      ABOUT THE FUTURE IS 
              because he’s become depressed. His mother, who is 
              at her wits end, points out it’s because of something                THAT IT’S UNCERTAIN. IT IS 
              Alvy has read in a book.  Alvy explains the problem:                  THEREFORE SURELY OUR 
              “The universe is expanding, someday it will break                  RESPONSIBILITY... TO ENSURE 
              apart and that would be the end of everything.”                     THAT OUR CHILDREN HAVE 
              “He’s stopped doing his homework” his mother 
              adds, to which Alvy responds: “What’s the point?”                          A DECENT FUTURE.
              This is a more imaginative version of the dog ate my 
              homework excuse and while it’s a little early to be getting    We’ve been here before many times, of course. Machines 
              metaphysical one might expand Alvy’s point about there         have a long and rather repetitive history of stamping out 
              being no point to enquire about the purpose of education       human skills and while it may be true that the scale and 
              in an age of information on-demand, kindergarten robots        the speed of change are different this time, they might 
              and artificial intelligence.                                   not be. 
              In an era dominated by the internet, mobile devices and        We would therefore do well to remember the sage 
              screens why would one need to physically attend school?        piece of advice contained in Douglas Adam’s book, The 
              Surely everything you need to learn can be accessed from       Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is “Don’t Panic!” 
              home? Moreover, why bother with spelling, arithmetic           We repeatedly overestimate the impact of new inventions 
              or even languages if Google can do all this for you? In        over the shorter term and while many superficial things 
              fact why bother learning anything at all if you can access     are changing, many deeper things are not.
              everything from anywhere at any time? What’s the point?
              FAST FORWARD TO THE FUTURE                                     On the other hand, the only thing we can say with 
                                                                             absolute certainty about the distant future is that it’s 
              I am aware of university students refusing to attend           uncertain. It is therefore surely our responsibility as adults 
              lectures, because they prefer to download their lectures       and educators of future generations to ensure that our 
              and watch them at their own convenience at 1.5                 children have a decent future. We should therefore make 
              times speed, rewinding anything that isn’t instantly           mild preparations for a number of different outcomes, 
              clear or understandable. But what’s the point of even          especially any that currently appear unfavourable. 
              this if advanced machine learning and autonomous               After all, if just about everything else is being digitally 
              systems are capable of doing almost everything humans          disrupted why not education? Surely education is one of 
              can do at a fraction of the cost? Under the current            the last bastions of the analogue and unless educators 
              system are we not teaching the next generation                 start to think about how to maximise the upsides of 
              to become rapidly redundant in the face of accelerating        digital technologies they will rapidly fall victim to the 
              technological change?                                          digital downsides.
                                                    Education: Future Frontiers   |  Occasional Paper Series
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                ON EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY
                      I’M A LITTLE RETICENT TO                                      THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA
                   SUGGEST THAT EDUCATION                                           Every time a freshly caffeine infused official is put behind 
                    NEEDS TO BE REINVENTED,                                         a desk there seem to be panicked cries to move forward 
                      PARTLY BECAUSE MANY                                           (or sometimes backwards) to compete with countries 
                     ASPECTS OF THE SYSTEM                                          towards the top the PISA global education rankings, 
                                                                                    namely: a) Singapore b) China, c) South Korea or d) 
                       WORK PERFECTLY WELL.                                         Finland.
                                                                                    This is a little odd because a) while Singapore is good 
                The educational system that exists in Australia today               at memorisation it has an issue with creative problem 
                is one largely shipped over from England in the 19th                solving, b) so does China c) ditto South Korea, which by 
                Century when the economy was based upon agriculture,                the way has a mental health epidemic largely caused by 
                repetitive work and skills that generally resulted in jobs          the pressure of a somewhat binary examination system. d) 
                for life. These jobs weren’t necessarily interesting, but           Finland, was a late developer educationally speaking, so 
                they did involve physical activity and provided identity and        it’s fairly easy to dazzle from a distance and demonstrate 
                meaning alongside money. This system worked fairly well             high gains from a relatively low base. 
                back then, especially when most workers didn’t have to 
                think for themselves.                                               Finland also unintentionally games the PISA system 
                                                                                    by doing well across a narrow band of conventionally 
                But the system arguably works less well now when                    academic subjects. If you measure student happiness 
                individuals are increasingly paid for their ideas or their          in Finland, for instance, the country is at the bottom of 
                ability to manage or motivate others. The system                    the class. Youth suicide is high in Finland (as worryingly 
                nowadays is also one where individuals are increasingly             elsewhere) and economically the country is one of the 
                responsible for the creation of their own lifetime                  weakest in Europe. 
                employment. Thus an appreciation of how one sells 
                oneself in an entrepreneurial context might be useful.              PISA, like its namesake tower, looks distinctly wobbly. 
                I’m a little reticent to suggest that education needs to be         The OECD claims that PISA tests assess whether students 
                reinvented, partly because many aspects of the system               have acquired key knowledge and skills that are “essential 
                work perfectly well, and also because one of the big                for full participation in modern societies.” They would 
                problems that education suffers from are endless attempts           say this because it’s the OECD, but the tests have little 
                to reinvent it.  You’d think that after one hundred and             or no regard to cultural or regional context and, more 
                fifty years or more we might have learned how to teach,             importantly, do not assess how individuals perform or 
                but apparently not.                                                 feel about themselves across the whole of their lives. 
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