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If you listened to some of the things academics, business experts and policymakers have been saying about how the world has changed, and is changing, you would be forgiven for thinking that everything changes – nothing stands still. And these changes are volatile and unpredictable, and they can cause a great deal of chaos and confusion if we don’t learn how to deal with them properly. Usually, these people go on to make some recommendations on what and how we ought to teach in schools so that the next generation will be able to not only survive but thrive in such a world. I agree with a lot of things these people say. But I also think that some things – some very important things, namely, what is good and the idea of doing no harm – do not change, and it is these things that give meaning to what we do every day. This also has implications for what and how we ought to teach in schools. In fact, there are subjects in the traditional curriculum that are particularly useful in helping us deal with a VUCA world - Philosophy and Literature.
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The 11th Annual Inter-School Philosophy Dialogue | Raffles Institution | 2014 HOW THE WORLD HAS (AND HASN’T) CHANGED
AND WHAT IT IMPLIES FOR EDUCATION WONG YEW LEONG
Dunne & Raby, Digicars, from United Micro Kingdoms, 2013. CGI by Tommaso Lanza.
We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.
The Internet is a
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We are becoming richer, so we are spending on not only function but also form.
In order to thrive in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, we need to be flexible, adaptable, creative and experimental; we need to be able to analyze things thoroughly, see things from multiple perspectives, grasp the interconnections between multiple forces, synthesize knowledge and information from different sources, and generate solutions that meet opposing needs.
“Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape – he is a shaper of the landscape. …[M]an is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it.”
Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, 1972.
Elemental’s Half-A-House project in Monterrey, Mexico, 2011.
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Adapted from Dunne & Raby.
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Jaemin Paik, When We All Live to 150, 2012.
Ai Hasegawa, I Wanna Deliver a Shark, 2012. Photography by Theo Cook.
James Chambers, Attenborough Design Group: Radio Sneezing, 2010. Photograph by Theo Cook.
James Chambers, Attenborough Design Group: Hard Drive Standing, 2010. Photograph by J. Paul Neeley.
Dunne & Raby, Digiland, from United Micro Kingdoms, 2013. Animation by Nicolas Myers.
Revital Cohen, Respiratory Dog, 2008, from the series Life Support.
The Tissue Culture and Art Project (Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr), Victimless Leather: A Prototype of Stitch-less Jacket Grown in a Technoscientific “Body”, 2004. Biodegradable polymer connective and bone cells. Photograph courtesy of The Artists. Hosted at SymbioticA, The University of Western Australia.
Embarcadero Freeway, San Francisco, after the 1989 earthquake.
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Adapted from Dunne & Raby.
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