Foundations of 21st Century Learning

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

By Diahann Hughes Hawkins

Humans are different from AI in that we have the ability to process a range of emotions with input from previous life experiences to guide our actions as we physically impact the world around us. An educated human in its essence could be defined as an individual who possesses an intelligent ability to interpret information, and apply it to real world situations. Education that merely disseminates facts & figures is literally a waste of mental energy, because without a framework for understanding why learning any information is important, this type of knowledge transfer risks being lost in short-term memory.

Curriculums of the 21st century need to be updated and designed with a particular outcome in mind, rather than a ‘knowledge dump’ that can be replicated by any Google search. If educational resources are directly linked to a greater purpose for learning or specific problem which needs to be solved, then any Learner has a powerful incentive to absorb data, process it and weld it into something deemed useful, much like a stone tool that was fashioned by our ancient ancestors. In that definition, education becomes more of a tool rather than an end in itself. The successfully educated person is one who knows how to use any information that they have acquired over their…