"Education is not about filling a glass, but about lighting a fire.""
Plato, The Republic (370 BC)
You realize how great the social bewilderment is when the same anxiety about the future manifests itself in very diverse sectors. Newspaper companies or hinge factories are asking themselves the same question as the main institution, the school: what should we do to adapt to an accelerated reality that is moving much faster than our capacity to adapt?
This week I had the opportunity to listen to some teachers and experts at a conference to rethink the school, organized by the Catalan Coordinator of Foundations. One of the important conclusions is that the experts are not primarily asking for money. They are asking for time, in a kind of claim to space to think about how to change things to adapt to new educational and labor needs and new tools like AI, which are in the hands of teachers and also students and change the approach to knowledge.
These times are as bewildering as they are fascinating. We have never had so much information, nor so little certainty about what to do with it. Technology opens all doors, but it has also often left us without a clear direction and shared goals. However, amidst this acceleration and the noise it generates, school remains one of the last spaces where silence is still possible, allowing us to create a bubble to work on the only truly essential thing: critical thinking.
The crossroads where education finds itself today reveals what Professor Jordi Riera calls three major disconnects. The first is the disconnect of inclusion: we want to embrace everyone, but we often lack the resources. Schools proclaim inclusion, but teachers feel overwhelmed by the lack of resources, time, and real support. The second is the technological disconnect: the speed of algorithms outpaces pedagogical reflection. We have responded with prohibitions, but the challenge is not to isolate ourselves from technology, but rather to educate in its critical and humane use. And the third is the teacher's disconnect, caught between vocation and bureaucracy, between the passion for teaching and the constant pressure of the system.
Despite these disconnects, and perhaps others related to teacher training, a new school is emerging. It's not the one that resists, but the one that persists: the one that adapts without losing what is essential, which is critical thinking based on knowledge and experience, creativity, and connection.
In the words of David Bueno, PhD in biology and expert in developmental genetics, "inspirational education is the only way to make utopias a reality," and he insists on preserving everything that works. Bueno advocates for a school that learns from neuroscience. For exampleAs explained in the ARA, creativity is the result of collaboration between different neural networks in the brain, and "knowing that creativity depends on the interaction between networks and neurotransmitters can help design educational and work environments that enhance it. For example, alternating moments of concentration and mental recreation, such as taking a walk or letting the mind wander, are principles that psychology and pedagogy already recognize,"
With young people and children bombarded by unfiltered stimuli, for Josep Maria Lluró, director of the Montagut School, the challenge for schools is to "educate desire" and guide them in avoiding harm among people and helping them understand the world.
For Caterina Calsamiglia, leader of the Computational Social Sciences group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, the key is time. Global solutions won't arrive, perhaps they don't even exist, and what's important is having time to look for partial solutions and focus on the process, on the journey.
Perhaps it's necessary to break existing consensuses to create new ones regarding student-teacher ratios, curricula adapted to the times, or the skills required to be a teacher. From the Vedruna School, Montserrat Jiménez calls for less talk about ratios and more about a "more humane, qualified, and equitable education."
The debate about schools is endless, but in a country of continuous reforms, it also seems to take the form of a loop. We talk about schools, but we often talk more about teachers and their working conditions than about how we want students to leave the classroom. Today, in the midst of the artificial intelligence revolution, the debate cannot be postponed, but above all, the goal of igniting the fire that Plato spoke of cannot be postponed. Our young people live in a new world that fundamentally demands critical thinking and the ability to think critically.
