This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on January 6, 2020 - January 12, 2020

GRETA Thunberg is TIME's Person of the Year for 2019 and it seems to be a fair indication as to where education will be heading in 2020 and beyond. She has been famously quoted to question the need to go to school when her future (and that of her generation) cannot be assured.

She said: “I felt everything was meaningless and there was no point going to school if there was no future.” It is a powerful indictment of how education has failed and become irrelevant to the post-2020 generation.

More importantly, she decided to push back, turning it into a wave of protest and a global movement. "I promised myself I was going to do everything I could do to make a difference," she said. In fact, she was adamant that 2020 would be the year for action against climate change.

Coming on the heels of the COP25 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which had to be extended from Chile to Madrid despite a two-week session, it gave the impression that Thunberg was on the right track, given the less-than-optimistic outcome coming from world leaders in their recent deliberations.

There has been widespread frustration and disappointment, including that expressed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. As it stands, it lacks clarity without any clear consensus as to how best to save planet Earth.

Living on one planet

Putting this in educational terms, there is much to be done yet on the world stage in educating leaders and policymakers on the burning issue (pun intended).

Developing countries and their inhabitants, for example, are still generally unaware of the dire consequences of the climate crisis that are being shifted to them, making their future even more vulnerable when the real culprits are largely not held accountable.

As long as this remains, the situation will worsen because the prevailing unjust distribution and consumption of resources between the Global North and South is unsustainable.

We are reminded of the profound statement made by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: "There is no Plan B, because there is no Planet B." Period. Thus, the standard to be agreed upon must be equitable and just for all humanity.

In other words, all nations must operate within the limits of one planet in terms of the available finite resources. Simply put, countries that have been living on a binge must now recalibrate (read re-educate) themselves into adopting a lifestyle that is based on one planet.

More than that, they must return the resources used in their unbridled excesses to those who have been deprived of them due to injustices of the past. Correcting historical injustices is a vital educational outcome in achieving global sustainability post-2020.

This is a far cry from what it is today, where education is in general geared towards unsustainable production and consumption, drawing on the model of the 19th century. Generally, it resembles the factory model coming out of the very first industrial age some 300 years ago.

There may be some variations of this over time, including the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0). Fundamentally, however, the assembly-line structure of the Man-Mind-Machine nexus (3Ms) stays subservient to the economic paradigm of the Human Capital Theory. This is now recognised to be inadequate as the ultimate solution for the future, given the confining and dehumanising nature of the 3Ms.

Education 2030 — from 3Ms to 3Hs

In this regard, the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change (MESTECC) has been proactive in appropriately framing COP25 to be continuously guided by and to reflect the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities, in the light of different national circumstances, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris Agreement.

It can serve as a sound foundation for education of the future in addressing climate change systematically. “While the world now has the Paris Agreement that entered into force in 2016, Malaysia stressed the need to assess the progress of pre-2020 actions by developed countries under the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol,” ­MESTECC said at COP25.

“The recent UN Environment Programme report shows emissions reductions have been inadequate in particular by developed countries, who (sic) should be taking the lead,” the ministry said on behalf of 25 developing countries.

Translated into educational terms, the 3Ms must now be expanded into a 3Hs nexus of Humanity-Heart-Hi-touch. This framework aims to enable the reconstructing of future education to be more inclusive, as envisaged by the overarching outcomes of Education 2030. This is also known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2016-2030 consisting of People, Planet, Prosperity, ­Partnership and Peace (5Ps). It is no coincidence that the 2020 International Day of Education, which falls on Jan 24, is contextualised on the same reference points.

From this perspective, Thunberg and her generation clearly point to what education’s next destination would be like, and how to arrive there. According to TIME, she "has offered a moral call to those who are willing to act, and put shame on those who are not" — global leaders included.

By creating a “global attitudinal shift”, as it were, millions across geopolitical boundaries have endorsed her call by joining hands to force recognition of an urgent need for change. To date, reportedly, Thunberg has joined forces with renowned natural historian Sir David Attenborough in asserting their leadership globally; namely, not just a sustainable one, but equally an equitable and fair one between the Global North and South.

Gone are the days when the latter was coerced into playing catch-up based on the standard set by the former, which has been regarded as the very source of the problem way back during the Earth Summit of 1992.

Learning to become

As a result, for the ensuing decades, the case further deteriorated until the introduction of the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development in 2005, which ended in 2014. Succinctly, the education factor played a pivotal role in moving the needle towards the goals of sustainability. Post-2014, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) came to the fore as described earlier, where the education factor is inherent in the transformative process towards a sustainable future.

This cannot be better illustrated than through the effort of Unesco, the lead agency for SDGs. In the last quarter of 2019, a global initiative called “Futures of Education: Learning to Become” was launched. It formed the basis of a major think piece that projects a new trajectory forward. It compiles opinions from thought leaders and experts around the world on every conceivable idea and concept that was unimaginable before.

Just like in the pre-industrial days of the 1700s when education (or what was left of it) was disrupted into an assembly-line model of the 3Ms, the next educational disruption is to humanise education yet again, in an increasingly inhumane environment, where schools have become mere factories for production of human capital (homo economicus). This is an outcome of the realisation that the current model is no longer focused on the nurturing of the "wise" person as reflected by the notion of homo sapiens.

Consequent to the emergence of homo sapiens ushering in the Anthropocene era, homo economicus has been seen, by and large, as responsible for the current precarious state of affairs, following on from the Holocene era of their "wiser" cousins.

The mission at hand therefore is to save planet Earth, and along with it ensure that all living species and their natural ecological ambience survive intact. Simply put, survival or being sustainable is the new endgame for education. And everything else follows accordingly.

Disrupting the world of work

Work that is regarded as anthropocentric in substance, namely activities that further deepen the Anthropocene, will have no place in reshaping the future. They are a threat to humanity. As such, the nature and meaning of "work" as we know it will be drastically redefined, not unlike the introduction of forced or child labour at the height of the industrial revolutions with their long-standing dehumanising consequences.

This is one lesson that must be taken to heart. There is simply no room for another myopic mistake in the name of progress and development that glosses over what is unknown or unanticipated. This time, the competencies to predict, forecast and build scenarios are imperative before putting lofty ideas into action.

The futures of education

To this extent, the futures of education as proposed by Unesco represent a global initiative “to reimagine how knowledge and learning can shape the future of humanity and the planet”. This has not been attempted comprehensively since the industrial revolutions hijacked education to serve vested interests, leaving behind “a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty and precarity”. In fact, as Unesco Director-General Audrey Azoulay was quoted as saying: "Our deeply humanist DNA cannot let us reduce education to a technical or technological issue, nor even to an economic one."

Allegorically, this is in perfect sync with what the younger generation has been saying all along, plus it sums up well with the 3Hs nexus in service of the dignity of all, while contributing "to the common good of humanity”, as envisaged by Unesco.

It is a catalyst for a global debate looking beyond the 21st century, designed to share a forward-looking vision that offers a policy agenda for the post-industrial age sans the Anthropocene and its ramifications. It is about leveraging education and knowledge as the shared platform of highly renewable human endeavours in instituting sustainable alternatives to transform the world.

This is a world that is more just, equitable and enriched by the wisdom of the homo sapiens that has been neglected, if not failed, to make us truly educated. At the same time, “Learning to Become” is rooted in the 1972 Faure Report, “Learning to Be”, and two decades later, in the 1996 Delors Report, which embraces the four pillars of learning for the 21st century.

For Malaysians, in particular, it would do well to build on the 1956 Razak Report, the ensuing Falsafah Pendidikan Kebangsaan (1996) and the inherent wisdom of its sejahtera (well-being) concept that are well-aligned to the two Unesco reports, as well as the futures of education.

Prof Tan Sri Dzulkifli Abdul Razak is rector at International Islamic University Malaysia. He is the founder-convenor of the Sejahtera Leadership Initiative, a citizens' initiative, which aims to nurture a holistic human-centric and balanced leadership for a harmoniously peaceful society with dignity.

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