In 20 years’ time, I believe today’s classrooms will appear to future generations much as those old one-room school houses look like to us now. If we have a goal for the next 20 years, it’s to fundamentally change education to include compassion, service and global citizenship.
For a start, it means adding some important subjects to the course curriculum. In some respects, our school curriculum today – with math, science, history and geography – is no different than it was in our grandparents’ day.
But what about the skills we need to get along in society, to interact with our fellow humans, such as compassion and empathy? We expect young people to pick these up by osmosis. In elementary school, these should be taught as specific subjects, with the same deliberation and emphasis as we might teach quadratic equations or the War of 1812. Already provinces including British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario are incorporating concepts of compassion and empathy into curriculum guidelines.