Today, a good friend of mine, asked me if I could come up with list of questions to provoke our thinking on where our education is taking us? The list is nowhere complete rather a start in that direction and I’m sure the readers would have many more of their own and I would be really happy if they could share them in the comments.

No one knows the answers anyways, it’s more to provoke thinking about these things. I did dig my notes and some quiet thinking later, anyways here goes..

1. How would you define growth, development and success? (not what it currently is, but what it should be).
2. What would be the culture of the citizens say 10 or even 20 years later, culture in the broadest possible term (like tattoo, social media usage is more common now unlike the bell bottoms of the 70’s and questions on changes to subtler cultural mores like attitude towards older people, marriage as an institution etc).
3. What would the be jobs of the future? What qualities, knowledge and abilities would people need to acquire to meet these requirements.
4. What will be the problems, concerns, issues prevalent in the society of the future? (natural resources, social structure and interactions etc).
5. What is the current education like and what are the gaps it needs to fill to prepare youth for a future society? What part of the current education system can stay? What part of the current education system needs to go?
6. How important are degrees, certificates and other symbols of learning? (again depends on what is being successful). Who does these symbols of learning really benefit?
7. How should learning happen? What qualities do we need to give our children?
8. Apart from a getting a job or preparing them for a career, what should education prepare a person for?
9. How can we create a good learning environment? (before that probably we will need to tackle “what’s a good learning environment or how should it be?)