Last month, I experienced the extraordinary India for the first time while delivering a presentation about the future of global education. The focus was on addressing global challenges with, and for, education. The goal was to provide a message of hope. Surprisingly, in a country of struggle, I received hope for us all.
It can be hard to find hope in the context of our shared experience of climate change, poverty, inequality, and war trauma.
Hope is needed by educators because of the difficulties global challenges place on their work. For example, 2023 was noted as the hottest year on record. Consequently, my colleagues on the Board of the World Federation of Mental Health (WFMH) were informed that in the Pacific region alone, over 3.8 million children could not get to school at some time because of the effects of climate change.
It is estimated that 1/3 of the girls will never return. This is not an isolated incident. 19,000 schools in Pakistan, such as the one pictured below, have been closed. Schools have been washed away. For many children there is No Back to School.
However, there is hope because many are noticing and acting. The UN notices. “Twelve months into the armed conflict in Sudan, 24 million children are at risk of a generational catastrophe, and their rights to life, survival, protection, education, health, and development have all been gravely violated”, a UN committee said. (United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, 18 March 2024).
The WFMH has noticed and acted. Adding its voice to the global push, our Board has called for an immediate cessation of all war, stating it is the ONLY solution to protect the most vulnerable people in society.
And there is hope because we have well-established education systems throughout much of the world and, as Nelson Mandela emphasised, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” (18 October 2012: Nelson Mandela).
Hope – because we know what skills our children and future leaders need to address these global challenges. There are increasingly-definitive frameworks for such skills which are well-developed and articulated. Examples include the UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development, and the list of future work skills from the Institute of the Future – Future Work Skills.
Academics are also publishing thoughtful papers about the leadership skills we need to equip ourselves and our community to secure tomorrow’s well-being. Guy Major Ngayo Fotso (2021) identified eighteen groups of leadership competencies required for the twenty-first century. The research on which they were based reveals that leaders of the twenty-first century must be able to combine a vital concern for people, customer experience, digitalization, financialization and the general good. See the matrix at the end of this article.
There is hope because in some places we are already developing these skills. Sir Ken Robinson spent a decade bringing to our attention the need for an education revolution and emphasising the urgent need to allow children to develop their creativity. His TED talk asking – “Do schools kill creativity?” is compelling. Sir Robinson made it clear to us that we need to encourage creativity. The schools I visited in India did just that – they were clearly aiming to develop the whole child, including their future innovation capabilities.
And there is hope because there is substantial evidence of the impact of such creativity through innovative ideas that have made an enormous positive difference to millions of people; such ideas as the friendship bench built on the work of Dr Dixon Chibanda. This idea started in his home country of Zimbabwe, where mental health issues are rife due to generations of trauma, yet have been largely untreated as the population of 15 million people had been served by only 20 psychiatrists. That was until Dr Chibanda decided to educate grandmothers with simple counselling techniques to sit with people and talk on a “friendship bench”. The success of the “Rise of the Grandmothers” has been extraordinary; the healing significance and the friendship bench is now a global positive phenomena supported by the WHO. (See ‘friendship-benches’.) Also using the untapped resource of grandmothers and spreading joy is the ‘School in the Cloud’, developed by Sugata Mitra. It is now educating children all over the world, with inspiration for all of us about the future of education through another outstanding TED talk – School in the Cloud.
In the context of education we are well served to develop our capacities for compassion and discernment alongside creativity. There is a small group of extraordinary people I am honoured to call friends who have spent their lives seeking to understand how to define and develop wisdom in children and adults. This task is done. We know how to create the capability to know what the right things to do are, at the right time, and for the right reasons – even in situations of confusion and disruption. The schools I visited in India appeared to be developing that capability. This is hope.
We need many skills to address the global challenges facing us. One powerful combination is to use innovation processes such as design thinking to encourage creativity, and inclusive contexts such as international collaboration to encourage understanding. The global Lego League competition is a good example.Children come together in multi-country teams to build collaboratively,which educates on science and relationship skills simultaneously. (See Lego League.) Perhaps we should set up an international Leadership Lego League.
Meta-mindfulness skills will optimise the impact of innovation and collaboration processes. Amongst other benefits, meta-mindfulness enhances our ability to control attention, and therefore, our creativity. It supports a balanced view of our own identity and thereby, facilitates quality relationships. The combination of all three – innovation, collaboration and meta – mindfulness has the capacity to develop people with the type of benevolent discernment shown by Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi delivered freedom to India. We can deliver freedom to our world if we grow in ourselves, and our children, the skills required to navigate our current and future global problems with benevolent discernment.
We know how to do this so there is much reason for hope.
Reference
Badham, R., King, E., 2021. Mindfulness at work: A critical re-view. Organization 28, 531–554.. doi:10.1177/1350508419888897
Ngayo Fotso, G. M. (2021). Leadership competencies for the 21st century: a review from the Western world literature. European Journal of Training and Development, 45(6/7), 566-587.