Paper short abstract:

The OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank have produced influential reports about how technology will change the future, and how education must adapt. This paper examines how the human is being enacted in these imagined techno-futures and their anticipated impact on different aspects of education.

Paper long abstract:

Education is an inherently future-oriented and humanistic enterprise – children are seen as ‘citizens of tomorrow’ and the job of education institutions is seen as preparing young people for their – and the planet’s – futures. Rapid advances in technology have resulted in a series of high-profile reports which project ideas about what the future will hold for education and for the young people in educational institutions today. These imagined futures are determining how education systems adapt in the present to accommodate, negotiate and ‘thrive’ in these futures.

This paper examines the imagined techno-futures in key reports from UNESCO, OECD and the World Bank to understand how these imaginaries are reconfiguring both the machine and the human. The OECD sees AI and humans as engaged in a race of knowledge and skills. While AI can keep learning and improving, humans can’t or don’t always do so – and they are thus under threat of being overtaken by AI. Similarly, the World bank places technologies and humans in competition with each other; technologies are to be tamed and colonised to serve humanity. Finally, UNESCO argues that we need to “relearn our interdependencies” and understand “our human place and agency in a more-than-human world.”

Together, these reports provide clues to how the human is being recast, reimagined, and enacted in imagined techno-futures. This paper examines and anticipates the impact of these enactments on different aspects of education.