Style: March 06, 2020

STYLE | report 23
the system and from parents, who tightly hold onto their
own schooling traditions.
“If you have been highly successful in education in the
past then you are more inclined to want the same sort of
education for your children,” she says.
But this doesn’t consider the rapidly changing world and
the future young people will enter.
“Doctors, lawyers and accountants would tell you their
professions are rapidly evolving,” she says.
Quite simply, technology is continuing to make redundant
large tracts of people’s work, leaving the future not in
“spreadsheets, but relationships”, she says.
“In turn, this should free up people to do more of the
work that connects humanity, and that is a huge area of need
for our young people and what they are crying out for.”
For Herbert, this means giving his contemporary education
teachers the tools to go engage with the “diversity of
response” and understand that all perspectives add value
to understanding education. By doing so, they can advocate
for change on the basis that they all are working for the
wellbeing of students and the community.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
The only predictable thing about the future of education is its
unpredictability.
Nor can you predict what professions schools are readying
young people for, says Herbert. Some technology will be
defunct, more will be developed. Global humanitarian issues
and cultural change will continue.
Herbert says the future of education is unpredictable.
Photo: The Mind Lab
“My experience of education, in the traditional sense,
was that it was the bedrock for the scientific method where
you could isolate a variable and test cause and effect, and
everything was very predictable.
“I think what is very different is we now have a better
understanding of the fact the real world we live in is very
complex and consists of interactive systems, and those
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