In February 2018, CHILD magazine in Australia (with a readership in the millions) published an interview that they did with me late last year. The topic? The future of schooling. In ‘The Next Generation‘, I outlined some perspectives on how education may be offered by the 2030s, and these ideas formed the basis for the interview. Here it is in full:

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Imagine if every school building on the planet disappeared overnight. Next day, children and teachers show up to a bare patch of dirt where school had been. That’s a scenario education futurist Tony Ryan asks us to envisage in his new book, The Next Generation (Wiley).

After the kids had finished partying (which in itself tells us something, Tony points out), what would 21^st century education look like?

“The first step in planning this future learning framework would be to craft a new learning narrative,” he says. “The 20^th century story was that children must spend 12 or more years relentlessly learning material in subjects they sometimes didn’t even like, then study further at a college or university, or do an apprenticeship.”

It’s time for a new narrative that offers our kids more flexible possibilities, he says. It’s going to look a lot like this:

* The new ‘classrooms’ might be a re-purposed industrial building, unused city offices, parents’ workplaces, kids’ homes, parks, museums, a maker-space, a school, or any makeshift location with an Internet connection or a mentor.

* Learning spaces will be designed for learning, not crowd control.

* The instruction mix might include online guidance, and individualized support for kids with their families.

* It will include an Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant for every child, freeing teachers up for higher thinking tasks and emotional support. “These assistants will competently develop the student’s basic skills in a gamified online environment. The same AI system will constantly assess the child’s learning and use the results to adjust the next study activities,” suggests Tony.

* By the 2030s, a child will study in multiple virtual classrooms worldwide daily. Gifted teachers will reach kids through voice translation devices and telepresence capability, across geographic and language divides.

* One-size-fits-all education will make way for a Learning Playlist for each child. Put together by the child with the guidance of learning analytics software and a great educator, the Playlist might be a mix of group and solo micro-learning, both online and with physical meet-ups. “They start by choosing four or five learning experiences. These may be a combination of school projects and assessment tasks, personal outside interests and perhaps one provocative challenge that will really stretch their abilities.”

* The Playlist curriculum will be designed by educators in tandem with local businesses, non-profits and public services to foster ‘enterprise-ready’ kids with skills they’ll need in the workplace – adaptive agility, a solutions focus, critical thinking and empathy.

* Real-life learning experiences will be part of the Playlist. Building an app to know when the bus is due, editing a how-to video for one aspect of Minecraft, or designing a website for an environment project are some of the possibilities.

“In this new education world, we will attract the most inspiring, intelligent and open-minded people on the planet to the teaching profession. At the same time, we will give explicit, unwavering support to those already there to become even more exceptional,” predicts Tony.

And when we’ve developed this new education system, he says, our kids will implement what they’ve learned through innovative enterprise (whether at a home or big-business scale) and philanthropy.  “Youth is no barrier to entrepreneurial activity,” says Tony, citing 11-year-old Cassidy Goldstein who patented the Crayon Holder after she slipped her crayon stubs into a plastic rose stem container so she could still use them; and 15-year-old Hannah Herbst who used a 3D-printed propeller, a small pulley, and a hydro-electric generator (total cost: $12) to build a floating device that converts the ocean’s currents into electricity, potentially providing power to millions of people in developing countries.

Will all this reformulation of our education system cost money? Some initiatives will, others won’t. To not spend will end up being expensive, Tony cautions. “Education is an investment, not a cost.”