History shows us that the top in-demand jobs of 2030 don’t yet exist. So it is our responsibility to apply the knowledge we have today to the opportunities that reveal themselves tomorrow. But our education system needs to change – perhaps radically – if it is to prepare our children to thrive in the twenty-first century. This means looking further afield for ideas, whether in the high-tech halls of Silicon Valley, the exam factories of South Korea, or the inclusive classrooms of Finland. Around the world, countries are grappling with how to scale quality education for their youth. While the spread of schooling over the past century is one of the great global success stories, expansion has too often involved insufficient mastery of core content and thinking skills: what to teach, but also how to teach it. Alex Beard spends much of his time searching the world for the most promising educational practices and sharing his discoveries with teachers, school leaders and policymakers in forty-six countries. Ed Fidoe is at at the forefront of innovation in the UK education system, working to roll out a speaking skills curriculum to schools across England, because the ability to communicate verbally is as important as literacy and numeracy. Sugata Mitra was given the $1m TED Prize in 2013 to help build his visionary School in the Cloud, a creative online space where children from all over the world can gather to answer big questions, share knowledge, and benefit from the help and guidance of online educators. Bethany Koby has created the award-winning make-it-yourself kits that empower children to create with – rather than be fearful of, or passive towards – technology. Laura McInerney co-founded Teacher Tapp, a daily survey of teachers’ lives, pinpointing their struggles, opinions and aspirations. Join us for a discussion between pioneers who are rethinking the components of the teaching and learning process—from curriculum to materials to teacher development – and who are looking in surprising places for their inspiration. Read more.

Francis Fukuyama is the soothsayer of our age, and his The End of History was political science’s Book of Revelation. More recently, he warned of the consequences when state and institutions everywhere are corralled by interest groups. His predictions were borne out by the rise to power of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies now threaten to destabilise the entire international order. These new charismatic demagogues seek a direct connection to the people – defined in narrow identity terms – and appeal to a particular group by excluding large parts of the population as a whole. Forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender have in turn fueled anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of political Islam, the fractious environment of American college campuses, the emergence of white nationalism. Identity politics is now entrenched on both sides of the political spectrum. On the left it proliferates into ever-expanding categories, and new forms of exclusion. Outsiders are not allowed to share in the knowledge possessed by a group, because to do so is seen as cultural appropriation. The idea of universal human rights has been replaced by the demand for ‘recognition’ – not for inclusion within the fold, but for acknowledgment of group identity as the right to assert and maintain difference. On the right, political tribalism in America has mobilized around the idea of whites as an endangered group, faced by the bleak demographic prospect of becoming a minority in their ‘own country’. And when everything is about identity politics, are we surprised that millions of Americans voted ‘white’ in 2016? Join us and discover from Francis Fukuyama: is there still time to restore the dream of universal recognition and equality of rights upon which liberal democracy was founded? Read more.