Education: Tool to develop Citizenship

In previous articles, I have referred to the fact that a major component of any 21st-
century-focused educational institution is to prepare and equip learners with a skill set
that will allow them to thrive in an uncertain and unpredictable future. Initially, most of
us will link this future to jobs and careers that, potentially, don’t yet exist. If they do exist,
they will look very different to our current understanding of them.

While preparing our learners for future careers is certainly a priority, no doubt, we as
educators would have not fully prepared our learners for their future if their careers are
the only focus. It is not only future careers, skill sets, and technological advancements
that are unknown, but also what societies will look like in the future. How do we prepare
our learners to not just be reactive to the societies they find themselves in, but
proactively shape what society should look like?

On this concept, well-known American philosopher, John Dewey states, “The conception
of education as a social process has no definite meaning until we define the kind of
society we have in mind.” Project-Zero, an educational department formed at Harvard
with a focus on 21st Century education, develop this idea by writing that education
needs to develop Citizen-learners. Citizen-learners recognize the complexities and
uncertainties of the world in which they live. They develop and share knowledge, form
connections to their community, and take meaningful action to support their own and
others’ well-being.

At King’s, our God-given mandate is to raise and release Godly leaders through
education. A large part of this is developing a deep sense of social responsibility within
our learners, with the understanding that God desires us to actively engage with society
and have an influence on it. We want our learners to be individuals who are actively
living for the benefit of others. This mandate becomes increasingly more important as
we seek to develop our learners to impact the future world that they will live in,
especially as we consider how drastically society has changed in our own modern
context.