"In August 2020 I was invited to present a paper on the topic of what schools could look like in 2048. This was for a conference in Germany on utopian visions. Since education is much broader than schooling, I found that it was problematic to assume that education in 2048 would still happen through schools. I accepted the invitation, proposing instead to engage conference participants in a different kind of future-focused activity than the one the conference organizers had imagined. I collaborated with the GTDF collective on designing and presenting at the conference a thought experiment called Education 2048. Since then, we have tried the experiment with several groups and started to map common responses to it. I will use this experiment to give a sense of what this book is about and why it might (or might not) be relevant in your context. There are two parts to this experiment. In the first part, you are invited to imagine a specific scenario; in the second part, you are invited to consider two sets of questions. The scenario places you on December 10, 2048—one hundred years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. You are in a 3D virtual reality world/ Skype call where people across the globe have gathered to decide the direction of education after a period of catastrophic events. These events occurred as a result of irresponsible human choices, followed by a period during which humanity managed to learn from the consequences of their actions and to coexist in wiser and healthier ways. In the second part of the experiment, you are invited to consider questions about the scenario and questions related to your affective responses to the experiment itself."
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