Educating for the Future: Empowering the Human Mind and Redefining Values and Citizenship in the Age of Technological Disruption

Abstract

Edición del informe de la V Conferencia Altius en la Oxford Union

What are the goals of education, and how should they be interpreted in our time? The challenges posed by the emergence of technologies like Artificial Intelligence demand a renewed reflection on the nature and scope of the educational process, in order to address the question of how to educate the human mind to cope with these problems and opportunities. The aim of this paper is to explore a framework for the relationship between education, values and new technologies within the present social and economic context. In it, the role of rationality, emotions, empathy, creativity and the possibility of developing a broader concept of mind for empowering human beings and helping us to better understand ourselves and the world will also be examined. In essence, the paper contains a summary of the main ideas discussed in the Fifth Altius conference on Educating for the Future at the Oxford Union, which took place between September 28 and 30, 2018. Due to the Chatham House Rule * This paper is an edited version of the report on the Fifth Altius Conference at the Oxford Union. It is written on behalf of the Altius Society at Oxford, with the collaboration of Altius scholars Ashkaan Golestani, María Alegría Gutiérrez, Pamina Smith, Joshua Tan, and Sven Wang. The Altius Society wants to express its special gratitude to Ashkaan Golestani for his valuable help in editing the text, and to Garry Jacobs (who has participated in the last three Altius conferences as a speaker and attendee and whose questions have greatly contributed to the debates) for his suggestion of publishing this report in Cadmus. The Altius Society at Oxford (https://www.altius-society.com/) was founded by Carlos Blanco Pérez and Alexandre Pérez Casares in 2012 with the aim of becoming a global forum where senior practitioners, academics, and political figures, as well as young promising scholars and professionals gather to discuss the most relevant strategic trends of the 21st century and their impact on the future of our societies and economies. Based on the ideal of intellectual cooperation across academic disciplines, the past themes of the Altius conferences at Oxford have been The future of democracy in the Western hemisphere (2014), The extension of life (2015), The brain of the future (2016) and The future of communication (2017). Throughout these years, Nobel laureates, Fields medalists, and world-renowned philosophers have spoken at the Altius conference in the Debating Chamber of the Oxford Union. Among the speakers at the Fifth Altius conference it is worth mentioning the names of the following: Sheldon Glashow (1979 Nobel laureate in Physics), Peter Agre (2003 Nobel laureate in Chemistry), Oliver Hart (2016 Nobel laureate in Economics), Sir Richard Roberts (1993 Nobel laureate in Medicine), Howard Gardner (Professor at Harvard University), Rose Luckin (Professor at University College, London), Jeffrey Sachs (Professor at Columbia University), Manuela Veloso (Professor at Carnegie Mellon University), Anne Watson (Professor at the University of Oxford), Simon Blackburn (Professor at the University of Cambridge), Andreas Schleicher (Director of the PISA report), Archie Brown (Professor at the University of Oxford), Mikołaj Dowgielewicz (former Polish minister for European Affairs), Peter Atkins (Professor at the University of Oxford), Miguel Ángel Moratinos (former Spanish minister for Foreign Affairs), Olivier Crouzet (Dean of Studies at École 42, Paris), Lady Barbara Judge (former Chairman of the UK Pension Protection Fund), and David Berry (Professor at the University of Sussex). CADMUS Volume 3 - Issue 6, May 2019 Educating for the Future C. Blanco-Pérez, A. Pérez-Casares & R. Rodrigáñez-Riesco 130 131 requirements, attribution has been avoided. Thus, the report is focused on the presentation of the most relevant concepts and arguments expressed by the speakers and exchanged with the audience. In any case, the report is not exhaustive and it does not necessarily reflect the order of events followed at the Oxford Union. Rather, it is aimed at exposing, in a concise manner, the principal themes that were explored during the conference and the key practical suggestions drawn from different sessions.