Building a Learning and Sustainable Planet Together 

This essay is included in the new book from the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF: The Future of Work for the People we Serve. To sign up for the launch of the book as well as a conference on the future of work and inequality, click here!

Gaell Mainguy, Marie-Cécile Naves and François Taddei

Today, worldwide, most learners are experiencing an obsolete form of education – not to mention the millions of young people who are left aside. In a world of rapid technological and economic transformation, people must engage in lifelong learning to anticipate changes, threads and opportunities and develop new capabilities throughout their lives. In such an uncertain world, we need to profoundly rethink the skills we need to teach and major reforms are needed in education.

The objective of this report was to facilitate the establishment of a learning society to prepare all learners for tomorrow – by empowering them to learn, anticipate the ongoing transformations, prepare for workforce change, act and lead for positive change.

In their book “Creating a Learning Society”, Joseph Stiglitz and Bruce Greenwald presented how learning how to learn resulted in a dramatic improvement of our standard of living and they explained how advanced and developing countries alike can model a new learning economy on this example.

A learning society facilitates both individual and collective learning, so that knowledge and experience of the first learners benefit to others and make learning and innovation easier for all. It encourages people to “learn how to learn” by optimising the way each person and each structure learns, including both humans and machines. It relies on research, uses the potential of digital tools and AI, and is open to innovations from other countries, so that good methods can be adapted to a local context – kindergarten, schools, universities, non-profit organisations, small and large companies, public institutions, etc. – whenever they are relevant. A learning society therefore develops its own capacity to adapt in a world where change is ever faster, more volatile and uncertain, giving rise to fearfulness and the temptation to withdraw.

Incivility, trust, sharing and cooperation are the core values of a learning society. They promote the pooling of each person’s experiences in order to achieve progress for all. By any standards, to bring about these changes, the personal and professional development of all the actors must be a top priority. The challenge is to move from a control-based approach to a trust-based approach, from one of hierarchy to one of mentoring, which helps each person to advance by relying on research and contributing to knowledge-building.

Innovations already present in public and private organisations all over the world and in different areas of learning show that implementing change does not mean starting from scratch. Notably, the exponential progress of technology can enable the emergence of a ‘digital campus’, a truly enhanced knowledge ecosystem that is fast, decentralised, cooperative, inclusive and open.

Moreover, a great number of people and institutions want to be part of a broader movement in order to overcome certain cultural or institutional barriers and optimise the impact of actions they have already taken individually. It is therefore crucial to make a plea for stepping up research, facilitating access for everyone to training, experience and results, and involving as many people as possible in carrying out innovative projects.

The report set forth five fields for action and thirty operational proposals and stressed their complementary nature. They should be implemented at the same time to promote change at scale and enhance synergies in a systemic way. The five overall actions are as follows:

Firstly, experimental approaches to learning should be encouraged, in particular at the city and territory levels, to prototype, document, share and evaluate promising projects for the benefit of all. Opening up actual and digital “third places” to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and organising a “Learning Festival” to celebrate all kinds of learning are two examples of concrete actions that could be undertaken.

Second, it is important to create integrated digital learning ecosystems, where all learners can document their learning, make career choices, meet peers and mentors and map out their future, in order to build a society based on recognition. Such “digital global campus” should serve as a universal gateway for all learners.

Third, research in education should be stimulated, by harnessing all the relevant disciplines and by stimulating participatory learning sciences in which everyone can contribute as fellow researchers capable of innovating all lifelong.

Fourth, we must reinvent and enhance research-based training of actors of the learning society, in particular the trainers, trainers of trainers and decision makers. The authors propose for example to set up “labs for the jobs of the future” open to all who wish to contribute to them.

Finally, it is necessary to invite other countries, in particular European partners, to join forces to build a learning Europe and beyond a learning planet. Together, voluntary countries can create an international network on education and training that is both agile and equipped with digital platforms for sharing research and innovation, training all the actors wishing to contribute and harnessing the collective intelligence by opening up to society’s initiatives and questions, at a time of co-development of human and artificial intelligence.

The recommendations should logically not be imposed but best be worked out collectively, prototyped and tested with voluntary trailblazers who have the means to experiment as well as document and share their journey. Particular reliance could be placed on the various funds available from the different learning society institutions, from local authorities, or calls for tender at the national and international levels.

The 30 proposals in the report should benefit from a light-touch and unified governance framework, to minimise what is described as typical institutional “silo” effect and maximise the synergies between the proposed actions. The authors suggest that these actions and proposals should be integrated into a five-year inter-ministerial plan, which could be steered by an ad hoc legal entity set up with the aim of transversality, with broad flexibility of action and capacity for dialogue, communication and initiative, bringing a high level of expertise and practicality to this clear and ambitious mission.

The learning society, seen as a public service, must emerge gradually to facilitate the necessary evolution and adaptation while making sure that it is not left to the digital multinationals to take over everyone’s learning experience. It also means gathering together the forces that already exist both in France and among its international partners, particularly in Europe, to allow everyone to develop his or her potential and help build the future together, as this is a key issue for democracy.

The learning society report has been well received by UNESCO, leading to its translation into the 6 UN languages. UNESCO is willing to engage all the voluntary countries that want to create their own version of the report and join a learning planet network to contribute to invent new ways to learn, teach and do research, in order to mobilise collective intelligence towards the planetary grand challenges such as United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In particular, it is critical to invite students willing to contribute to the SDG, via the design of specific SDG-based curricula from higher education institutions and corresponding ad hoc recognition mechanisms such as SDG-based olympiads.

At a time of growing division between those who benefit and those who suffer from globalisation and the ongoing digital revolution, when inequalities of skills and knowledge foment fear and rejection of the Other and are being exploited by some politicians in all the Western countries, it is urgent and necessary to create the conditions that will allow everyone to learn to seize the new opportunities that are opening up.

Each citizen should be given an opportunity to build a much greater entity – a learning planet, capable of tackling our grand challenges such as those of the SDGs. It is about creating new organisational modes, harnessing the collective intelligence and affirming values to be able, together, to build tomorrow’s world.