Within education, there are many more, different hands now in the project of creating curriculum. It used to be just a small number of people, most of them like old white men. And so the people who are creating curriculum are diverse, and students themselves now are more involved in that. It does feel like students now have more of a say in the future that they're trying to envision. And actually, like, have a hand in creating what they're learning in the present, which I think is good. And I hope that that trend continues.
I do think as educators, we're starting to exercise more humility about the idea of preparing students for fields. Because we're aware that you know, we ourselves may not have the skills or the foresight to know what we're preparing them for. And so really, what we're trying to do is cultivate these skills and habits and dispositions to succeed in that sort of unknown future.
It definitely feels, in my setting now, like we're approaching this pivot point - that may have been accelerated by COVID - where people are starting to rethink in bigger terms, kind of the intersection between education and technology. Certainly, in higher education, people are looking at that and saying, you know, I don't know if I want to pay 100,000 US dollars to go sit in a lecture hall when I can just do it on the computer.
So, you know, because of the pandemic, we had to make all sorts of changes – upgrading our technology, large monitors in every room, the ability to simulcasts with people at home, in every room, etc. And now all students are coming back in person and we're starting to have discussions about, you know, what about that experience do we want to discard and what part of it do we want to maintain?