Assumptions

  1. Education systems today do not take into account the high pace of information flow. A new learning competence that allows us to think in patterns and relationships is necessary to help people learn how to collect and compile information in a meaningful way. Education today must increasingly take into account the growing amount of information as a key dynamic of knowledge development.
  2. Once the basic understanding is set, education must shift from continuing to teach the "building blocks" (models, theories or methodologies), to building more learning competency in patterns, relationships and pictures, e.g. making the concept of "space" a core element of learning and how to learn to navigate in open situations to explore unknown territories. Developing ongoing increased competence in the "building blocks" is easy to find (and in abundance) on a multitude of websites, learning and knowledge platforms, but it is harder to access learning resources in visual thinking.
  3. We lack the necessary visual/self reflecting competence to complement our digital/traditional competence. What information is right, wrong or even fake, is an important question. Sometimes the discussion reaches a meta level. The argument around what is true or not often becomes even more important than the information itself. Pictures play an important role in that game. Once we have seen the image, we can no longer ignore it. It begins to influence us significantly. Without a balance of the two sides, the information AND the image, our ability to meaningfully filter information is compromised. Because information is spread across so many channels, filters often get lost. We have to ask if the pictures really fits to the information. Often they are used as a simple illustration of the message which is intended to get across most effectively.
  4. Because we have much more control over what we choose to learn (compared to the time before the digitization of information through the Internet), we must acknowledge that our biases create "bubbles" in how we collect, interpret and use information. Such a phenomenon can be observed, for example, in professional circles, which often have such strong systemic dynamics that the system refers to itself. Therefore, an important competence and attitude in education will be to make transparent how we construct our personal perspective and shape our mental models through our preferences, experiences, values and strengths. Not doing so would result in a loss of dialogue across areas of knowledge. Education needs a different space to probe that.
  5. Competencies, what we are trained to do, will play a less important role in the future. It is not so much a matter of what we learned in the past - that might even become obsolete - it is more about how we are capable to adapt with upcoming challenges. For instance, the rapid change of our environmental and social situation evokes a dynamic which is very difficult to predict. We can't rely on what we learned, instead, we have to be prepared to cope with the unknown. Therefore, our potential, what our core strength as humans are, must be in the centre of educating. We have to ask: are we curious, do we have a love for learning and exploration of new territories, do we have the ability to balance and recreate our environmental context? We need to understand our potential in depth and make that visible, in order to fulfill our role and responsibility.

  6. People today lack of competency to navigate confidently in uncertain situations. Artists are trained to push their imagination. They ask: What is the next step beyond what has already been achieved? Therefore, the concept of 'productive dissatisfaction',i.e. the ability to be open to taking the next step over and over again, is a core competency. By expanding our understanding of what is art, (Beuys: Every human is an artist) we can rethink what has been achieved so far and push solutions to the next level or towards unknown territories. With this attitude we can re-shape all matters of society.

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INPUT REQUEST #4: Assumptions

  • Which assumptions are unclear to you?
  • Which assumptions do you strongly disagree with?
  • What assumptions do you think should be added to the list?

Please use the comments section to discuss.