Last week we spoke with students and parents new to our school, many of whom were new to Singapore. We started with the why – our school’s Mission:
The UWC movement makes education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.
For those who were understandably wondering about new classes, friends, uniform and timetables, this may have seemed a lofty, distant ideal. But with so many very good schools available in Singapore, this lofty goal remains our defining characteristic. Or more precisely – because lofty goals are easy to write – how we put this into practice remains our defining characteristic, and I hope why families have chosen us.
I am very pleased, however, that it is no longer a very special goal – at least, not if we take special to mean rare. Go back fifty years and this kind of thinking was marginal, outlier, considered naïve and well off the mainstream. Today the idea that we should not settle for less for our children is absolutely mainstream, almost banal. The notion that education should ignore wellbeing, critical thinking, character and a higher purpose, may be clinging on here and there, but it’s on its way out. There are two reasons behind this; they may seem to be quite different, but ultimately, they are mutually supportive.
Firstly, there’s the realization that the education most adults received is no longer appropriate for the world of work. As well as having knowledge and qualifications, it is increasingly important what students actually possess skills and that they can actually do things; and today knowledge may be best seen as the (essential) means to skills and capabilities. In our disrupted, AI-influenced economy today’s students will have to be increasingly adept in human skills and qualities, and ready to use them in real-world contexts on difficult and complex human problems It’s not just educators saying this, but governments, businesses, NGOs, the OECD and others. So the contexts provided by our focus on the peoples, nations and cultures part of our Mission is exactly how to prepare students for an uncertain future; because these are the areas that are the pressing challenges we face and that will not be automated,
Secondly, it’s important to place schools in a much broader social context. And that context may be startling. Because despite the horrific events going on in many places, the world is – in many significant ways – still a better place to live than it has ever been, . Extreme poverty has been halved since 1990, childhood deaths are dropping, literacy is rising, the status of women and minorities around the world is improving. Now let’s not be naïve here – tragedy, atrocity and grinding poverty are still real today. But the current trajectory is astonishingly positive, and where there is injustice, we are beginning to see outrage and social activism to address it – not consistently, but increasingly so. In the past where issues may have been ignored. So there is a broader social move towards widening moral circles; and schools both reflect this and importantly, prepare students to continue down this path. That’s where the peace and a sustainable future part of our Mission comes in, and why we weave the Mission so carefully throughout our Learning Programme.
There is no tension between the pragmatic necessity to prepare students for their future, and the idealistic opportunity to make whatever small contribution we can to the historic trend. We intend, this year and forever, to do both to the best of our capacities.
