Hi, I'm Phnam.
Hi, I'm Mardis.
And we're the hosts of Future Future, where two designers talk about the future of everything.
We're in the business of turning science fiction into reality for a better future.
And today, we're going to talk about the future of education.
There are a few things that we believe, as designers and architects, that educational systems should have,
should provide to the children.
One is community.
A safe space in which children can live and play.
Awareness, connections with others,
unstructured play.
I love unstructured play because it allows people
to really develop their cognitive abilities.
But also, a space for children -
how would they craft that?
How would they give themselves ownership?
Yeah, because think about a lot of the schools that we went to as children.
They were very regimented. There were cubes and very rectillinear buildings.
One fun fact is that a lot of school architects are actually prison architects as well.
And you can see the correlation between the two.
There has also been a lot of development of progressive educational systems
notably in the early 1900s
Montessori, right?
Montessori! And famous CEOs of today, namely
Bill Gates and Sergey Brin,
Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, were Montessori students.
So, if you think that today's successful CEOs were taught by methodologies
created in the early 1900s, what kind of methodologies
do the successful children of tomorrow need today?
We live in the age of information.
We are getting lots of data all the time.
How do we create a child that grows up and wants to continue to learn and evolve and expand their mind?
They're not going to have a choice, because when they grow up,
they will want to change careers five, six times,
and the only way to keep up with the times is to learn new skills,
is to connect with new types of people.
So, what we want to do is create people that are very autonomous.
They can actually have their own purpose.
They can be functional and capable of becoming who they want to be
and changing if they want to be someone else.
Yeah, they need to believe that they can do what they need to do right now,
instead of falling into a pit of anxiety for something they haven't tried yet.
So, we're going to talk about how to revolutionize an educational system
using five tools that we've developed here at Nonfiction.
Number one, sensory experiences.
How do we really harness - you know, we know kids are all just a ball of energy
and have all this different input going on all the time.
How do we harness that and really allow them to operate in a way that's best for them?
So number two is living sustainably.
The kids today are very aware of the harm that humans are doing to this planet
and the children of tomorrow are going to be even more so.
Ironically, kids are some of the worst polluters and they don't even know it.
When you count up diapers, when you count up clothing - because kids are growing all the time -
when you count up SUVs taking them to soccer practice, that kind of thing,
It really does kind of add up in a strange way.
And I think they're growing up to be more aware than we ever were.
Next is emotional intelligence.
If we teach from a very early age how to express their feelings,
how to act accordingly,
how to take criticisms from other people in a very constructive way...
If you think of all the adults around you that are emotionally not wonderful,
that's because they were not given the tools as children.
So, in order to build the next generation of
wonderful adults, we need to take care of this today.
And we want to create a space that works for children.
And what that means is...what would make them engaged
and really activated when they go to school,
beyond just a desk?
Maybe it's a workshop with robotics, maybe it's a curated library
just for them. Maybe it's something else. Maybe something physical that really
makes them connect with school on a totally different level.
Let's stop talking about children as a group that thinks the same because they're the same age.
Every single one has different things they're interested in one day,
and it might change tomorrow. That's okay.
We can adapt to that.
On that thinking, they learn at different paces, too.
Can we cater learning for two kids the same age, but one
excels in this area where the other one excels in a different area,
and then we really develop it in a way that they can find their own purpose,
really drive towards what they want to do?
And that's going to eliminate the idea of giving up on the child.
It's a problem that's very, very recurrent in many schools, and
if we give a chance to every child to blossom in one way or another,
they will repay it later.
Our last point is connecting beyond the school.
So, you have children that are in this building, they might be
connecting with the teacher, and connecting with children from the same school,
but typically that's about it. There are some schools
There are certain schools that are also open to connecting with other schools in the same city, for example.
But what if they connected with children from all over the world,
children who speak different languages?
What if they connected with people who are at work and
who could expose to them the reality of how it is to work as an adult?
Perhaps connecting with your parents in ways that are more interesting than what is happening at home?
So really, that connection, using technology and really learning,
it's not only the children learning from others, it's others learning from the children.
And those others, adults, are going to build a world that really thinks of children
as citizens rather than people stuck in a room.
I love the idea of thinking of them as young, autonomous adults that go on and
make their own decisions. They just need a little guidance
here along the way.
Talk about building much healthier, happier kids and future adults.
So, using these five ideas that we just shared with you,
what we want to do as designers and architects is really align
the future of education with the future of work.
A lot of jobs in the future don't exist yet.
A lot of adults in the future are going to change careers all the time.
They need to be given the tools, the confidence, and the environment
to make that happen.
So, designing the future of education is all about that.
We want to thank you for joining us here today
on this creative sharing and vision of what the future of education could be,
and look forward to seeing you again next time.
Bye bye!