Education for the future: an international perspective

Abstract

Building a strategic direction for education ultimately rests on the extent, to which we resolve the key issue addressed by UNESCO’s International Commission on Education for the 21st Century (the Delors Report): what kind of education is needed to create the kind of world, we want to emerge in the future? Certainly, globalisation brings with it many new challenges, opportunities and dangers and global forces are impacting on the directions being taken by education systems around the world. At the same time, we, individually and collectively, must strive to determine our own destiny. The direction in which education heads depends both on the global forces shaping our common future, and on the policy choices and programs, we put in place over the next decade. In this paper, it is argued that in the 21st century, we need a renewed sense of the purpose in education, one which restores harmony in human development by giving greater emphasis to the social, cultural and moral dimensions of education. In essence, we must learn to live together and develop the competencies needed tackle the social, environmental and economic challenges facing us in a rapidly changing, complex and unequal and conflicted world.