Hi, my name is Mon, and I am a human. I created this website with my tech creator Vincent (from Amsterdam). It is the year 2025, a quarter of a century has passed. We made it, although I did not see any flying cars today.
Prior to arriving here, we had many predictions about what this future would be. Amongst all the guesses about what this age would be, did we predict we would have to defend and potentially protect our humanness?
As education grapples with the pressures of being compared to its global peers, the pressure to address declining literacy and numeracy standards, teacher shortages, and student school refusal are many issues that education is experiencing. However, to discuss issues is to discuss the problems to be fixed, and here lies the problem.
Education is a rare creature in that as a large, looming, institutionalised beast, its stand-out feature is that it is a proactive beast; its job is to prepare young minds for a future world proactively. Unlike hospitals that fix patients, education prepares these patients for the big world and what a big world it is.
A young mind loves to learn; it is one of the most precious resources available to our world. Educational systems and the people working within them inherently know this and choose to be within education as change-makers; it is one of the only proactive professions available to us, along with other professions that involve growing and creating things.
In education, we help to facilitate the growth of human beings; we support them as they develop their being. This makes education a hopeful world. Yet, this proactive positioning has weakened, and many places of learning have moved into more reactive states, trying to navigate complexities and challenges that put them on the back rather than the front foot. Stepping boldly is part of a proactive attitude.
As we arrive at the year 2025, this platform looks to strip back and return to why we do what we do within education. Rather than fix problems or look for creative solutions, we remember a key component: we are human and make things.
Teaching and learning are natural; we are born learners and teachers, and we die learners and teachers. We are part of a natural cycle, we are finite rather than infinite beings. To re-centre hope, we must first re-centre the idea that we are human. We are a being.
Possibly, what it is to be a human being will be the point of this next quarter of our century, technology and engineering systems will only become exponentially more efficient. As a being with a cognitive and physical self, possibly our role within education will be to support and console that cognitive and physical self like never before. Our job will be to proactively position the human being within a complex world. This requires potentially re-centring what is teaching and learning, why and how we do what we do. And there may be an element of re-writing involved. This is an exciting task.
So, where to start? We start with the being and we look at what is being. Within most education platforms, we recognise the person and, at times, even the ‘whole’ person, but do we actually consider being and living as social beings and how that allows our becoming?
There is a term that has been obsolete for a long time now, well not obsolete but recognised as not utilised very much and that is called Ontology. Ontology helps us to reflect, contemplate and engage with ideas on What is Being. More recently, what is knowing has trumped this question. And since we clearly don’t need any more trumping, potentially, we can look to this ostracised word ontology for the re-centring we need. Utilising ontology helps us to pause, take rest and consider what we are. From there, we can engage with what we might become and then take action to make that happen.
We quickly lose our orientation in a stormy sea if we do not know where N,E,S and W are. We need to orient ourselves within today’s world, which means addressing our own ontology of being. Once we have discovered ourselves, we have the bearings to then look to others and the outside world.
Taking time to acknowledge our being is the propellent we need to continue to navigate our complex world. This means understanding our own values beliefs and articulating them through the biography of our existence. We then use this understanding to create and be amongst the wash of our fluxing world. This is not a luxury or an additional extra but a necessity. Let us begin this process. Together.
Until next time,
Mon x
EDUCATOR8 
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