Preparing a child for a world that does not yet exist is not an easy task for any teacher. We live in a society where we barely have time to think and investigate. Billions of us have more pressing things to do, such as going to work, taking care of their kids, or looking after elderly parents. Thinking about the bigger picture is a relatively rare luxury (Harari, 2018). So, what is happening in the world today, and what is the deep meaning of events?
Truly, humankind is facing unprecedented revolutions. How can we, as agents of change, prepare ourselves and our children for a world of such unprecedented transformations and radical uncertainties? In this essay I will explain why it is so difficult in our society to think critically and what can be done to foster in children one of ‘the four Cs’ 21st century skills (Trilling, 2009).
High Risk, High Opportunity Society
On October 2014, Professor Lord Anthony Giddens claimed “…we are living at the edge of history, we are living in a civilization which is veered away from previous history…” (Durham University, 2014). What he meant to say and further explained, is that we as a group of societies are facing many circumstances which no other previous civilization has ever faced. That is, a range of dangerous problems are threatening us, but also a variety of extraordinary opportunities are available at the dawn of the 21st century. To explain this more clearly, few examples would be of global population growth, where less than two centuries behind us the population of the world was nearly of 1 billion, and we are now moving to 10 billion or more. As a result, Globalization (Giddens, 2002) is a natural consequential effect, given the fact that people move all around the world to look for better standards of living, or in a more extreme case, to survive escaping from war and famine, a phenomena that the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (1989) refers to as “the tramp and the tourist”. The development of technology has given eruption to new and sophisticated weaponry, the like of which arms of massive destruction used in Hiroshima & Nagasaki during the WWII are only a pinprick compared to the nuclear power that certain states have established (Giddens, 2004). Furthermore, a widely spoken topic on nowadays government’s agenda (NASA, 2019), Climate Change, where sudden alteration of natural environments, such as sea-level rise, extreme weather events, drought and water scarcity forced humans to migrate to safer environments. As agreed by a group of expert scientists from the Academy of Science of 19 countries “…human activities are a significant contributing factor in changing mean of global temperatures” (Cook et al, 2016). Our civilization has invaded nature to a degree which has never happened before, but at the same time our civilization is invading our inner nature and the body in a way which has also never happened and never been possible before (Giddens, 2004). Super computers are getting more and more powerful and are now capable of a variety of innovative tasks, robots are overtaking human beings in many different areas and AI is going to take over human intelligence in many areas of life.
To some extent, a form of immortality can be achieved, thanks to new technologies regenerative medicine is capable of regrowing cells, fix injuries, and create clone bodies or recreate them genetically. These imminent possibilities are presented for the first time in our lives, and many of these changes will become more radical than they are today, with many ethical and social issues.
Certainly, it has continuities from previous civilizations, but a whole range of issues, both positive and negative, are being presented in a revolutionary way, like never before. As biotechnology and machine learning improve, it will become easier to manipulate people’s deepest emotions and desires, and it will become more dangerous than ever to just follow our hearts. Giddens states that “…We live in a world of transformation, affecting almost every aspect of what we do. For better or worse, we are being propelled into a global order that no one fully understands, but which is making its effect felt upon us all” (Giddens, 2002, p.6-7). When Coca-Cola, Facebook, Google, Amazon or the government know how to pull the strings of our hearts and press the button of our brains, can we still tell the difference between ourselves and their marketing experts?
Post Modernity
The world which Giddens (2002) talked about is what the French sociologist Jean-François Lyotard (1979) defined as the Postmodern era or Post Modernity. In order to comprehend what the theory means; it is important to briefly explain what it is predecessor signifies.
What is Modernity? “Modernity” refers to modes of social life or organisation which emerged in Europe from about the 17th century onwards and which subsequently became worldwide in their influence. Modernity is multidimensional and complex, and mainly characterized by four basic institutions, as defined by Giddens (1990, p.59): Capitalism, Industrialisation, Surveillance capacities and Military Power.
What used to be Pre-Modern, where the available choices were predetermined, became open to more choices. On an environment of trust, the kinship system used to be a relatively stable mode of establishing social relations across time and space, local communities contributed to Ontological Security in ways that are substantially dissolved in circumstances of modernity. Religious cosmologies provided practical interpretations of moral and ethics, of personal and social life, as well as of the natural world, which represent an environment of security for the believers (Giddens, 1990, p.103). Monotheistic religions have as their primary commandment to believe and trust in The One True God, Creator of the Universe, and while other religions are not so monotheistic, the idea of reliance upon a supernatural being or force is a common feature of many otherwise different religions. Alongside religious beliefs are traditions and culture, where reflexivity in the idea of modernity is in contrast. The reflexivity of modern social life consists in the fact that social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices, thus constitutively altering their character (Giddens, 1990, p.38). The reason for this is because the rate that we can receive information is much faster, which leaves us to reflect on everything and leaves us on a sense of uncertainty (Giddens, 1990, p.114). This process of transformation, have led to what has been given a variety of terms, where only few refer to a positive emergence of a new type of social system (“information society” or “consumer society”), and where most sociologists have suggested to as “post modernity”, “post-industrial society”, “post-capitalism”, and so forth. In this transition, the self has become a reflexive project for which the individual is responsible. Self-understanding is relegated to the more inclusive and fundamental aim of rebuilding a more reward sense of identity, where the self, forms a trajectory of development from the past to the anticipated future (Giddens, 1991, p.76). Of the Narrative of the Self, a controversy dilemma is that it requires a coherent biography that takes time and efforts and that often leads, in the post-modern society, to dependency on different sociological concepts, such as attachment to global capitalism, monetary system, media infrastructure, consumptionism, relationships, body regimes, and in worst case scenario consequences are the rise of narcissism and fundamentalism (Giddens, 1991, p.8). As a result, therapy emerges as a new expert system to help identity reconstruction. This shows that, even if we are exposed to unlimited choices, our freedom is limited and we are often looking for basic trust as a certainty against abandonment (Erikson, 1965, as cited in Giddens, 1991, p.95-96).
Critical Media
Edward Doxs (2011) said: “…the Internet is the most postmodern thing that exists in our planet. Its most immediate effect in the West seems to have been the birth of a generation that is more interested in social networks than in social revolution.” At present, too many schools focus on cramming information. In the 21st century we are flooded by enormous amount of information, and even the censors do not try to block it. Instead, they are busy spreading misinformation or distracting us with irrelevancies (Harari, 2018, p.260-261). Even in the most remote areas of the world if you have a smartphone, you can spend time reading Wikipedia, watching TED talks, navigating on Facebook and taking free online courses. As Harari (2018) points out “..people all over the world are but a click away from the latest accounts of the bombardment in Syria or of melting ice in the Arctic, but there are so many contradictory accounts that it is hard to know what to believe.”. How to tackle this issue?
“Critical media literacy pedagogy” could be an effective way that pushes to illuminate the underlying power structures that are part of every media text (Garcia, Seglem, & Share, 2013, p.109) in order to create a democratic formative education. The National Association for Media Literacy Education defines media literacy as the ability to “access, analyse, evaluate, and communicate information in a variety of forms, including print and non-print messages.” (Media literacy defined, 2003, as cited in Garcia, Seglem, & Share, 2013, p.110). Using the lenses of semiotics, multiculturalism, feminism, and postmodernism, critical media literacy theorists developed a dialectical understanding of textual analysis, political economy, and audience theory that allows popular culture and media to be analysed as dynamic forces that often reproduce dominant ideologies. This also opens possibilities for counter-hegemonic alternatives (Kellner, 1995, as cited in Garcia et al., 2013, p.111).
Several examples of this successful approach are provided in UCLA’s Teacher EducationProgram’s Critical Media Literacy course (ED466), which prepares educators for teaching K12 students to explore their relationships with media, technology, and popular culture by critically questioning different types of representations and creating their own alternative media messages. I will further address them in the oral defence of the essay.
Conclusion
Critical thinking has been assigned as one of ‘the four Cs’ (Trilling, 2009) 21st century skills, and it is all about being able to ask questions, the right question. To succeed in such a challenging task, we will need to work very hard on getting to know our operating system better. To know what we are, and what we want from life. This is, of course, the oldest advice ever: “to know thyself”. For thousands of years philosophers and prophets have urged people to know themselves. But this advice was never more urgent than in the 21st century, because unlike in the days of Lao Tzu or Socrates, now we have serious competition.
