ver the past 18 months or so, much has been said and written about the pandemic induced crisis in education—learning loss, loss of socialization, declining levels of mental health, etc.—brought about primarily because of the prolonged closure of schools; as well as the exacerbation of pre-existing challenges around access to quality education. While these challenges remain acute and demand urgent action from the international community, there is another subtler but equally consequential crisis in education that the pandemic did not cause but rather has thrown into stark relief.
COVID-19 has exposed the failure of our education systems to provide a shared ethical and intellectual framework around which our societies can coalesce to determine the best approach to take in addressing the pandemic and its consequences. While early on, a certain amount of confusion and improvisation was to be expected given the relative novelty of the crisis—the world had not experienced a public health emergency of this scale and immediacy in over a century—what is deeply troubling is that 18 months into the pandemic, the world is still in hoc to vaccine nationalism (an ethical failure), and vaccine hesitancy (an intellectual failure), which are likely to prolong the pandemic and add to the toll of lost lives and livelihoods. More worrying still, the failures associated with the pandemic are only the latest manifestations of a more general malaise. Across a range of issues from the climate crisis to the migration of refugees, and rising income inequality, we seem to be losing our capacity to conduct reasoned debates aimed at building actionable consensus.
Perhaps it is unfair to lay the blame for these failings at the feet of our education systems; education systems are not immune to the political, social, and economic contexts in which they operate. However, over many decades (if not centuries) bold claims have been made positioning education as something of a panacea for many of the world’s political, social, and economic ills, from discrimination to inequality. So, as education leaders we need to account for these failings and propose a way forward.
A good place to start is by acknowledging the persistently low standards of foundational skills in language, mathematics, and science, even in some of the worlds most developed nations. According to the latest available PISA Scores (2018) across the whole of the OECD—a multilateral grouping of most of the world’s wealthiest countries—only around 25% of 15-year-old students tested scored above level 3 (level 1 being the lowest), and less than 10% attained the highest levels 5 or 6. What this means, is that less than 10% of students are according to the authors of the PISA 2018 report “able to comprehend lengthy texts, deal with concepts that are abstract or counterintuitive, and establish distinctions between fact and opinion, based on implicit cues pertaining to the content or source of the information” (language); and “capable of advanced mathematical thinking and reasoning” (mathematics).
While sceptics can point out that it might be unreasonable to expect the average 15-year-old to perform at such high levels, it is worth noting that in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, and in Singapore, the equivalent percentages are, in language, over 50% above level 3, and over 25% at levels 5 or 6; in mathematics, over 65% above level 3 and over 40% at levels 5 or 6; and in science, over 50% above level 3 and over 20% at levels 5 or 6. Simply put, China’s top urban education systems, and that of Singapore have proportionately twice as many students attaining the higher levels of proficiency than do the countries of the OECD. This should not be surprising because both China and Singapore have avoided the relativist trap of treating all subjects as of more or less equivalent value, and have consequently overinvested in these core foundational subjects.
Language (especially verbal reasoning), mathematics, and science, are critical because it is only through these that we will achieve a better understanding of the challenges that confront us, and develop the necessary solutions. Much as I personally love the arts, literature, and history, and am convinced that they significantly enrich our lives, solutions to the climate crisis for example, will not primarily come from these domains.
But these foundational subjects are also important not just because the world could do with a few more doctors and engineers, but because, science and reason (both verbal and mathematical) provide a universal problem-solving framework that is immune to cultural or other forms of relativism. Coronaviruses are completely agnostic about the political, religious, or ethnic identities of the people they infect, and as long as they are able to find hosts, they will continue to mutate and evolve in ways that maximize their potential to propagate. Carbon dioxide atoms are also agnostic particularly about geopolitics, borders, exclusive economic zones, etc. As more of them are added to the Earth’s atmosphere, they will continue to trap more and more heat, warming the planet, and amplifying all manner of natural disasters from storms to floods, and forest fires. And both Coronaviruses and Carbon Dioxide atoms really don’t care if we believe in their existence or not.
The world is in urgent need of broad-based scientific literacy, and verbal and mathematical reasoning programs. We can no longer afford to have significant segments of our societies who are unaware that science is not just a collection of academic disciplines with its own canon of works (no doubt reflecting the dominance of the white Anglo-Saxon protestant patriarchy), but by far the most rigorous and robust method at our disposal for interpreting reality; an approach that has embedded within it processes for refinement, reinterpretation, and where appropriate wholesale revision of acquired knowledge. Nor can we afford to have reason relegated to the status of just one of a number of ways of knowing alongside imagination, intuition, and faith; no matter how important and necessary these may be, they are not of the same order of importance or utility when it comes to addressing the common challenges that we face. Whose intuition, imagination, or faith should we trust and why?
Beyond science and reason, the world is also in need of a broad-based revival in the study of applied ethics. We can no longer afford to have ethics be something that only philosophy majors study seriously. Most secular education systems shy away from ethics for fear of offending cultural sensibilities. At the root of this reticence is the close identification of ethics with morality. While moral codes are a product of ethics, the study of applied ethics involves understanding the different processes one can employ to make value judgments and to weigh competing interests. Again, ethics is more than just a list of thou shalt and shalt nots. Moral codes vary and change significantly across time and place. But the processes for thinking ethically tend to be evergreen.
Without a shared ethical framework we will not be able to address issues such as the obligations that we might owe future generations both born and unborn. In the context of the climate crisis this is a critical question because we can be reasonably sure that unless we act now, the worst effects of runaway global warming and the burden of coping will be carried disproportionately by those who will be alive at the turn of the 22nd Century. We can also be reasonably certain that most of them have yet to be born, and that a plurality of those born over the course of the coming decades will be in Africa; the UN projects that by 2090 around half of all children under the age of 15 will be in Africa.
COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for the existential crises coming our way. Sadly, at the level of our education systems and beyond, we are failing this dress rehearsal. We urgently need a course correction and this can only happen if we rediscover the universal language of science, reason, and applied ethics and use it to interpret the world around us, and build actionable consensus. We cannot simply cross our fingers and hope that it’ll be alright on the night.
Editor's Note: This feature was originally published in Diplomatic Courier's UNGA 2021 special print edition.
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The Other Education Crisis
Photo via Unsplash.
September 23, 2021
COVID-19's impact on our education systems—and society's often dysfunctional response to the pandemic—illustrate failures in the political, social, and economic contexts in which they operate, failures we must address for the sake of future generations, writes WISE CEO Stavros Yiannouka.
O
ver the past 18 months or so, much has been said and written about the pandemic induced crisis in education—learning loss, loss of socialization, declining levels of mental health, etc.—brought about primarily because of the prolonged closure of schools; as well as the exacerbation of pre-existing challenges around access to quality education. While these challenges remain acute and demand urgent action from the international community, there is another subtler but equally consequential crisis in education that the pandemic did not cause but rather has thrown into stark relief.
COVID-19 has exposed the failure of our education systems to provide a shared ethical and intellectual framework around which our societies can coalesce to determine the best approach to take in addressing the pandemic and its consequences. While early on, a certain amount of confusion and improvisation was to be expected given the relative novelty of the crisis—the world had not experienced a public health emergency of this scale and immediacy in over a century—what is deeply troubling is that 18 months into the pandemic, the world is still in hoc to vaccine nationalism (an ethical failure), and vaccine hesitancy (an intellectual failure), which are likely to prolong the pandemic and add to the toll of lost lives and livelihoods. More worrying still, the failures associated with the pandemic are only the latest manifestations of a more general malaise. Across a range of issues from the climate crisis to the migration of refugees, and rising income inequality, we seem to be losing our capacity to conduct reasoned debates aimed at building actionable consensus.
Perhaps it is unfair to lay the blame for these failings at the feet of our education systems; education systems are not immune to the political, social, and economic contexts in which they operate. However, over many decades (if not centuries) bold claims have been made positioning education as something of a panacea for many of the world’s political, social, and economic ills, from discrimination to inequality. So, as education leaders we need to account for these failings and propose a way forward.
A good place to start is by acknowledging the persistently low standards of foundational skills in language, mathematics, and science, even in some of the worlds most developed nations. According to the latest available PISA Scores (2018) across the whole of the OECD—a multilateral grouping of most of the world’s wealthiest countries—only around 25% of 15-year-old students tested scored above level 3 (level 1 being the lowest), and less than 10% attained the highest levels 5 or 6. What this means, is that less than 10% of students are according to the authors of the PISA 2018 report “able to comprehend lengthy texts, deal with concepts that are abstract or counterintuitive, and establish distinctions between fact and opinion, based on implicit cues pertaining to the content or source of the information” (language); and “capable of advanced mathematical thinking and reasoning” (mathematics).
While sceptics can point out that it might be unreasonable to expect the average 15-year-old to perform at such high levels, it is worth noting that in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, and in Singapore, the equivalent percentages are, in language, over 50% above level 3, and over 25% at levels 5 or 6; in mathematics, over 65% above level 3 and over 40% at levels 5 or 6; and in science, over 50% above level 3 and over 20% at levels 5 or 6. Simply put, China’s top urban education systems, and that of Singapore have proportionately twice as many students attaining the higher levels of proficiency than do the countries of the OECD. This should not be surprising because both China and Singapore have avoided the relativist trap of treating all subjects as of more or less equivalent value, and have consequently overinvested in these core foundational subjects.
Language (especially verbal reasoning), mathematics, and science, are critical because it is only through these that we will achieve a better understanding of the challenges that confront us, and develop the necessary solutions. Much as I personally love the arts, literature, and history, and am convinced that they significantly enrich our lives, solutions to the climate crisis for example, will not primarily come from these domains.
But these foundational subjects are also important not just because the world could do with a few more doctors and engineers, but because, science and reason (both verbal and mathematical) provide a universal problem-solving framework that is immune to cultural or other forms of relativism. Coronaviruses are completely agnostic about the political, religious, or ethnic identities of the people they infect, and as long as they are able to find hosts, they will continue to mutate and evolve in ways that maximize their potential to propagate. Carbon dioxide atoms are also agnostic particularly about geopolitics, borders, exclusive economic zones, etc. As more of them are added to the Earth’s atmosphere, they will continue to trap more and more heat, warming the planet, and amplifying all manner of natural disasters from storms to floods, and forest fires. And both Coronaviruses and Carbon Dioxide atoms really don’t care if we believe in their existence or not.
The world is in urgent need of broad-based scientific literacy, and verbal and mathematical reasoning programs. We can no longer afford to have significant segments of our societies who are unaware that science is not just a collection of academic disciplines with its own canon of works (no doubt reflecting the dominance of the white Anglo-Saxon protestant patriarchy), but by far the most rigorous and robust method at our disposal for interpreting reality; an approach that has embedded within it processes for refinement, reinterpretation, and where appropriate wholesale revision of acquired knowledge. Nor can we afford to have reason relegated to the status of just one of a number of ways of knowing alongside imagination, intuition, and faith; no matter how important and necessary these may be, they are not of the same order of importance or utility when it comes to addressing the common challenges that we face. Whose intuition, imagination, or faith should we trust and why?
Beyond science and reason, the world is also in need of a broad-based revival in the study of applied ethics. We can no longer afford to have ethics be something that only philosophy majors study seriously. Most secular education systems shy away from ethics for fear of offending cultural sensibilities. At the root of this reticence is the close identification of ethics with morality. While moral codes are a product of ethics, the study of applied ethics involves understanding the different processes one can employ to make value judgments and to weigh competing interests. Again, ethics is more than just a list of thou shalt and shalt nots. Moral codes vary and change significantly across time and place. But the processes for thinking ethically tend to be evergreen.
Without a shared ethical framework we will not be able to address issues such as the obligations that we might owe future generations both born and unborn. In the context of the climate crisis this is a critical question because we can be reasonably sure that unless we act now, the worst effects of runaway global warming and the burden of coping will be carried disproportionately by those who will be alive at the turn of the 22nd Century. We can also be reasonably certain that most of them have yet to be born, and that a plurality of those born over the course of the coming decades will be in Africa; the UN projects that by 2090 around half of all children under the age of 15 will be in Africa.
COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for the existential crises coming our way. Sadly, at the level of our education systems and beyond, we are failing this dress rehearsal. We urgently need a course correction and this can only happen if we rediscover the universal language of science, reason, and applied ethics and use it to interpret the world around us, and build actionable consensus. We cannot simply cross our fingers and hope that it’ll be alright on the night.
Editor's Note: This feature was originally published in Diplomatic Courier's UNGA 2021 special print edition.
