Contribute Your Ideas to the Futures of Education

This month, UNESCO’s International Commission on the Futures of Education released a paper outlining nine ideas for public action in education in a post-COVID world. In her preface, Her Excellency Sahle-Work Zewde acknowledges that the global pandemic has the potential to both demonstrate our connectedness, and negatively impact the most marginalized students.

Looking at the nine ideas through that lens, the Commission is demonstrating a clear commitment to equitable access to information. It asks educational stakeholders — including teachers, students, parents, philanthropists, and governments — to democratize education by creating more public and open-source resources, emphasizes that voices of students and young people should be centered in the education space, and calls on governments and other funders to to pay educators fairly and protect funding for public education.

These points demonstrate a commitment to equity in education that is aligned with ours; however, they specifically call out the importance of scientific literacy without acknowledging the role that an arts and cultural education plays in enhancing STEM curriculum. Scientific literacy “explores the relationship between fact and knowledge and is capable of leading students to understand and situate themselves in a complex world” (17).

The Commission emphasizes that a “broad, humanistic” approach to science is essential for “the development of the whole person, not just academic skills” (18). Its emphasis on contextualizing each student’s role in a global community suggests a commitment to arts, culture, and humanities in education that’s not explicitly recommended herein.

As an artist, arts administrator, and life-long arts learner, I feel strongly that my arts and cultural education was fundamental to my development as an engaged and informed citizen of the United States and the world. 

UNESCO’s recommendations are necessarily vague, so as to be applicable to the broadest set of communities, and they are a jumping-off point that is well-aligned with Creative Generation’s mission and practices with regard to equity; However, we hope to submit feedback in line with our 2020 campaign — arts & culture is a fundamental civil and human right — to UNESCO’s call for written responses.

We’d especially like to hear from you about this! How have you seen the arts and culture impact your communities? How do arts and culture facilitate youth leadership to social change within educational contexts? How do they enhance community understanding? If you’d like to contribute to our response, you can email bridget@creative-generation.org with your story or — if you’d like a little more guidance — you can answer our short survey at this link.