The GSF & UNESCO Webinar: “Co-Constructing Futures of Education” will take place on the 5th of May, from 02:00 – 03:30 PM CEST / 01:00 – 02:30 PM GMT. The event co-hosted between UNESCO and the GSF, is part of a student movement summit contributing to the UNESCO Futures of Education initiative, linked to the UN Secretary General’s Transforming Education Summit in September 2022. Simultaneous interpretation will be provided in French, Spanish and Portuguese. Registration link: https://tinyurl.com/GSF-FoE.
We are at a critical turning point in human history with paradoxical development trends challenging our common future. We face a choice: we can continue an unsustainable path or radically change course. Knowledge and education are key to shaping more just and sustainable futures. However, at present, ways of organizing education and structuring learning opportunities across the world do not sufficiently ensure equal opportunity, justice, human flourishing, a liveable planet, and shared progress that benefits all.
In November 2021, UNESCO launched a landmark once-a-generation visioning report, Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education, that issues a call for reimagining education and knowledge for purposes of social transformation. Authored by an independent International Commission of global thought leaders, this report was the result of a two-year consultation and co-construction process that has engaged over a million people.
UNESCO’s Futures of Education initiative calls for a rebalancing of our relationships with each other, with the living planet Earth and with technology. And it recognizes that to transform the world, education needs to be transformed. Towards this end, the recently released report calls for a massive collective effort to build “a new social contract for education” – a rethinking of the education’s purposes and dimensions that will move forward through a broad, inclusive social dialogue in which children, youth and students play a significant role.
The vision
Following the belief that education is an extremely powerful tool to change realities, this initiative aims to mobilize the many rich ways of being and knowing in order to leverage humanity’s collective intelligence. In order to cooperate with it, GSF will bring together the student movement to contribute to this initiative:
- Engaging student union leaders with the report (Executive Summary of the Futures of Education report)
- Supporting the energies and voices of students in taking concrete, tangible action towards the transformation of education
- Inspiring regional and national student leaders to conduct similar sessions with the membership of their organisations
- Generating examples and outcomes that can be synthesised, analysed, and used to inform the Transforming Education Summit (TES) being planned by the UN Secretary-General for September 2022 in New York