Whatever intergenerational contracts may have been in place – spoken or unspoken, real or perceived – are largely gone. The promise and hope of previous generations—in the Western world at least, the majority of young people around the world could never dream of such things to begin with—to lead a better life than their parents is a flickering image of the past.

But it’s not the lack of economic prosperity alone that infuriates young people. Not that it wouldn’t be reason enough: close to 90 million young people are unemployed, constituting about half of all unemployed people – and also roughly half of all young people interested in working. And that’s the average – in Syria, to quote but one example, the unemployed young people make up nearly 80% of the working-age unemployed population. The growing youth employment crisis, earmarked by these ballpark figures, has been largely ignored.

Add the unsustainability of the current growth-and-screw-the-environment-mantra and the massively rising social injustice to the colossal employment mess, and you get a highly explosive mix, which keeps bubbling to the surface on the streets across the planet. Young people have to watch how the world as we know it, its economic, social and political fabric, disintegrates, day by day. They don’t like the mélange of the cocktail of political, economic and social disfranchisement, and have begun to show their anger about being robbed of their own future with what Heribert Prantl calls “the sacred rage of the young.”

A global youth revolt in the making.

The exploding and imploding inequalities are one of the most impactful consequences of a well-known dilemma: what Zygmunt Bauman calls the tripod of economic, military and cultural sovereignities has long lost its stability. Economic globalisation and the deterritorialisation of capital and labour leave current political structures crumbling and humbled.

As Bauman puts it in his newest book “Collateral Damage. Social inequalities in a global age (2011)”:

“…the exclusive compound of growing social inequality and the rising volume of human suffering relegated to the status of ‘collaterality’ (marginality, externality, disposability, not a legitimate part of the political agenda) has all the markings of being potentially the most disastrous among the many problems humanity may be forced to confront, deal with and resolve in the current century.” (Bauman 2011:9)

Current events only seem to underline Bauman’s grim analysis:

• whether it’s the civil unrests in 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois, in 2007 in Villiers-le-Bel or in 2011 in London;
• the England riots and the United Kingdom anti-austerity protests;
• the grassroots protests in 2009 in Iceland, 2010 and 2011 in Greece, 2011 in Portugal and Spain;
• the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt;
• the civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen;
• the protests in Algeria, Chile, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Oman;

- and the list doesn’t end here! The calls for change—various kinds of change, for different sets of reasons, caused by different triggers, each unique and standing in their own right—have a decisively amplified tone, scale and intensity.

Much has been written and said about all of these events,

• from different, diverse and disputed opinions on the London riots
• to the role of young people and the role of social media in the Arab spring,
• from the Spanish grassroots protests including nolesvotes.org, the Democracia Real Ya collective and the acampadas
• to the clash of generations in Greece.

Probably Slavoj Žižek has, with this observation:

“Opposition to the system can no longer articulate itself in the form of a realistic alternative,”

offered an analysis widely shared across countries and contexts.

Without wanting to or claiming to offer a definite understanding for the various protests and movements across the globe, Manuel Castells summarises more drastically what seems to be happening:

“The disgust becomes a network.”

The note says, in Catalan, "I want to grow up in a better world"

There is a determined and unifying No! to the increasing inequality and a loud and clear Yes! to much-needed change and a different way of living, and living together. It’s obvious that young people, who are expressing their anger and frustration as much as their desire and hope for change so forcefully these days, are determined to shape our times.

“Will it be revolution, evolution, or resignation?” -

so wonder the minds behind One Young World, the global youth leadership summit, in their new 2011 White Paper Beyond the Long Spring of Dissent.

It certainly doesn’t look too much like resignation right now…

In his article The dead end of globalisation looms before our youth, Pankaj Mishra argues that we are witnessing a fresh political awakening, a world awakening with rage about “a condition of prosperity without equality, wealth without peace.”

Wolfgang Gründiger of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations makes an equally strong statement when he writes, and warns, that

“all those who claim this generation is apathetic should know: the revolt of the young has only just begun.”

Current events certainly suggest that Mishra and Gründiger are spot-on.

Yet, the question remains:

Where are we headed?

Image credits: David Barrero, Maxi Failla, Muhammed Muheisen, Dominique Faget, Sara Noorbakhsh and Alex Ballesta.

Palomar5 Education organised a small, conspiratory event in reponse to Sir Ken Robinson’s call to bring on the learning revolution, a great opportunity to get some glimpses of how we will learn in the future through the lenses of Basti Hirsch, who went on a five-week education expedition through the United States; Aron Solomon, who is busy creating a boarding school with wheels, the Think Global School; and Margret Rasfeld, who founded a protestant reform school in Berlin. What have I seen?

I am here for the learning revolution.
And you? Photo by wfryer on Flickr.

I have seen three very different approaches to and understandings of learning and education by people who share the belief that—while public education remains a fundamental cornerstone of democratic societies—much of what happens in our institutions of formal education is wrong and represents a broken system.

I have also seen a few shared principles underpinning three schools that are so very different –

• the Science Leadership Academy, “an inquiry-driven, project-based high school focused on 21st century learning in Philadelphia,”
• the Think Global School, “a global, private and non-profit high school that travels the world and tosses educational sterotypes out of the window,”
• the Protestant Reform School, “a Berlin-based reform school aiming to introduce a radical change of learning culture.”

Many of these shared principles, I would guess, are key to most of the innovative education endeavours I know. Add to the list and share what you think in the comments!

We will learn in the future by

• following rhythms of inquiry and learning rather than rhythms of compartmentalised structures and times,
• moving away from memorising and teaching towards exploring and learning by doing,
• turning away from sitting and listening passively to constructing and collaborating actively,
• facilitating learning from failure instead of punishing every little mistake,
• accepting uncertainty as the only certainty there is within the complexity of learning,
• relating learning and living in ways that are fruitful and enriching both ways,
• not teaching what to learn and think, but by teaching how to learn and think,
• inventing and facilitating new and integrated learning formats, combining subjects and approaches,
• turning away from instruction and control towards facilitation and support,
• moving away from spaces controlled by educators towards spaces controlled by learners,
• providing encouragement and support instead of criticism and barriers.

Admittedly, this list is generic—quite possibly, too generic—but it’s a start. Wir fangen schon mal an.

Right.

The context of the project may sound very specific, but the outcome is a brilliant resource for any person facilitating processes of exchange, dialogue and discussion anywhere in the world!

The study was commissioned by the German Technical Cooperation Organisation (GTZ) in support to the HIV/AIDS Programme of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

You may wonder what the work of Mandela’s foundation against AIDS has to do with dialogue. Well, promoting dialogue has been and remains one of the prime goals of the foundation’s HIV programme.

“Maintaining public interest in HIV and AIDS has proven to be a key to beginning to challenge individuals and organisations on an increasing and significant scale to help those who are affected and infected.”

It is in the framework of this thinking that an excellent toolkit on dialogue was produced which introduces itself by quoting the author of Sophie’s World and Norwegian intellectual, Jostein Gaarder:

“An answer is always the part of the road that is behind you. Only questions point to the future.”

The introduction continues to set the ground for the publication by observing that our modern world loves answers and quick solutions to problems, which we love to pass on to others through writing, teaching and lecturing. The authors continue to state, and I could not agree more, that this approach — while being useful in some situations — is problematic when addressing the challenges of our time – social and human, economic and political.

Why is that so?

Pioneers of Change and the GTZ have two reasons to give to the answer-craving audience:

Firstly, we live in a world of increasing complexity, where answers have a short life-span and problems are characterised by three types of complexity: dynamic complexity, social complexity and generative complexity.

Secondly, people seem to have an inherent desire to solve their own problems, which is why universal, formulaic responses imposed from the outside often fail — producing even more simplistic “solutions”.

So, dialogue is the ultimate solution then?!

Well, not so quickly! Let’s have a closer look at the two reasons and see where this takes us.

The idea of threefold complexity stems from Adam Kahane and his book «Solving tough problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities» about which Nelson Mandela said:

“This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created.”

In his book Kahane typifies complexity and in doing so differentiates between

• dynamic complexity, meaning that cause and effect are distant in space and time and suggesting that a systemic approach is needed to address this type of complexity and underlying problems,
• social complexity, meaning that there is no singular truth or ownership of an issue but rather many different and usually conflicting opinions and assumptions about the problem in question, suggesting that a participative approach is required to deal with this kind of complexity,
• generative complexity, meaning the problematic situation is constantly and unpredictably changing and therefore old solutions to previous problems are not working any longer, suggesting that a creative approach is necessary to cope with this form of complexity.

In other words, Kahane claims that today’s problems can only be solved by processes which are holistic, democratic and imaginative.

And how could you better combine these approaches than through shared experience and exchange? How could you better stimulate new ideas and utilise the wisdom of crowds than through genuine dialogue?

So here it is then, the spirit in which this handbook critically explores different tools and methods to engage in processes of authentic dialogue. Excitingly, the authors have not just described a couple of tools. They have done much more in looking at the stories behind the approaches and asking where they come from to put each approach into a context.

It is because of this contextualisation and historicisation that the book can also provide unique space for constructive and critical reflection by showing limits or pointing out weaknesses of the approaches described. At the same time, the publication gives hints on how to creatively combine different methods and strategies to best respond to the situation at hand.

Let me give you an example to illustrate the publication’s approach and my point. You all know very well the circle as a method of engaging in dialogue with groups of up to 30 people or so. Well, the book has something important to say on the circle:

“For many who are not used to the circle, the slowness of the conversation and thinking can be frustrating… It’s worth noting that social science research has actually been done to show that the first person to speak can have a large influence on what is said and the direction the conversation takes. The circle seems particularly prone to this dynamic. This can be useful, but it can also be problematic.”

To cut a long story short: In doing these things it is so much better than most toolboxes out there. Actually, by doing these things it is much better than most toolboxes out there.

So what exactly are you waiting for?
Right click, save as, print and read!

And obviously: try out and explore in practice, and if you have something to say
please do give feedback to the authors – it will surely be appreciated…

∞