Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

Conclusions
The present study demonstrates that the ideals of peace, sustainability and
global citizenship associated with SDG 4.7 are reflected to varying extents in
education policies and curricula across Asia. However, it also reveals the extent
of the challenges that remain if schooling is truly to become a vehicle for
realising a sustainable and peaceful future, underpinned by a consciousness of
what we owe to each other and to our shared home by virtue of our common
humanity. Superficial insertions of particular concepts and competencies into
policy documents and curricula guidelines will not suffice for this purpose.
The piecemeal and largely rhetorical adoption of ideas of critical thinking, or
empathy, or even ‘peace’ in curricular documents is unlikely to loosen the nexus
between unsustainable development and formal schooling. While ESD, GCED or
related areas remain consigned to the fringes of school curricula, ‘scaling up’
existing good practices in this area will make little contribution to securing the
peaceful and sustainable future we all presumably desire. We need to place these
concerns at the centre of our thinking about education.
The findings of this study show that these
ideas remain peripheral rather than central to
official discourse on schooling across Asia. Both
the coding results discussed in Part I, and the
qualitative analysis in Part II, demonstrate that
despite the immense political, economic and
cultural diversity of the societies under review,
they mostly share a broadly similar orientation
towards the goals of schooling — one that is in
fundamental respects at odds with the goals
enshrined in SDG 4.7.
Most espouse the overwhelming or absolute
priority of national interests and identities
over transnational understandings. Many in
Despite the immense
political, economic
and cultural diversity
of the societies under
review, they mostly
share a broadly similar
orientation towards the
goals of schooling — one
that is in fundamental
respects at odds with
the goals enshrined in
SDG 4.7
turn define the nation — explicitly or implicitly — in terms of rigid ethno-cultural
categories, with implications for the status of minorities and migrants, and for
the accommodation of diversity. And many, though not all, portray the nation as
an object of unquestioning loyalty rather (or more) than a guarantor of rights —
as an entity that commands its citizens, rather than being commanded by them.
Schooling typically reinforces the imperative of absolute loyalty by presenting
children with a vision of the world that is implicitly Darwinian — in which strong
nations compete to survive, while the weak go under. Given the still raw legacy
of colonialism, imperialism and violent conflict across Asia, the prevalence of
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Conclusions and Ways Forward