Global Thought Leader Symposia

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The Whitestone Foundation dba Whitestone Publications announces its inaugural online thought leader symposium entitled “The Existential Crisis of Learning and the Future of the Knowledge Economy”.

Whitestone Global Thought Leader Symposia are open to anyone with a professional background and feature thought leaders with different types of expertise to analyze and discuss issues of local, national, and global scope that challenge us in the present and near future.

The first symposium will be a one-day session that will also be recorded.

They will draw on themes from the “Wild Globalization” project, especially a new segment that examines “wild learning”.

You must register here in advance of the symposium in order to participate.

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Symposium #1 “The Existential Crisis of Learning and the Future of the Knowledge Economy”

The global economy, with which the US economy is inextricably intertwined, within the last few decades has morphed without question into a knowledge economy. Artificial intelligence, or AI, has accelerated and deeply augmented this transformation.

The knowledge economy is an economic system where the generation, acquisition, and application of knowledge play the premier role in facilitating economic growth, development, and productivity. Unlike traditional economies that leverage physical resources, cheap and unskilled labor, or industrial production, the knowledge economy is built on intellectual capital—skills, expertise, innovation, and intangible assets such as intellectual property, research, and technology.

Despite the meteoric trajectory of the global knowledge economy in the last two generations, it has a potentially fatal weakness that may in the very near future undermine and puncture its success. That weakness is our failing education systems, not just higher ed but K-12 learning as well.

Higher education, especially in the United States, is imploding because of a “perfect storm” of excessive costs, declining undergraduate enrollments, cratering entry level job opportunities, growing public distrust, outsize cutbacks in government financial support, and new visa restrictions on foreign students.

K-12 education, which feeds students to colleges and universities, is in dire trouble because of falling student performance, widespread teacher shortages, chronic underfunding, budget instability, mounting mental health and social challenges, policy and curricular turbulence, a dearth of instructional innovation, outdated pedagogical models, and lack of reliable access to current information technology.

According to the World Economic Forum, globally over 250 million children remain out of school, especially in low-income countries facing conflict, displacement, or chronic underfunding. There is a critical international teacher shortage and persistent digital inequity, which altogether impedes educational and social progress

What is to be done?

The usual, tired, lazy-minded response is “more funding”. However, even a US Department of Education study concludes that, after decades of substantial increases in education funding, student outcomes have not improved “substantially, if at all.” It underscores that observers and policymakers frequently note the lack of significant return in student achievement despite greater investments.

Our educational systems from kindergarten to graduate school are for the most part constructed on a paradigm from the 19th and early 20th century factory era that has become totally irrelevant to the 21st century and the digital age.

Education as a whole, including higher education, needs to undergo a total makeover, or large-scale “rethink”, and we need to begin now. At the same time, we are compelled to ask the question, “if we know what needs to be done, how can we really do it, and how do we deal with the seemingly insuperable obstacles we face”?

Panelists

Photos and full bios

Dani Chesson (University of Denver)
Darryl Meekins (Lightbox Consultants)
Erik Raschke (Goudsewaarden School, Netherlands)
Erec Smith (Cato Institute, Free Black Thought)
Justin Taylor (Sewanee School of Letters)
Victor Taylor (The Whitestone Foundation)
Paul Wolfe (The Cambridge School, Dallas)

Moderators

Carl Raschke (University of Denver)

Gary Bedford (Wild Globalization Project)

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Some questions to be covered during the symposium

1. What is actually meant by the term “knowledge economy”?  What kind of “knowledge” is most vital and valuable to the human condition, and why?
2. What might be some more productive or effective ways of generating the knowledge that powers the knowledge economy than those that prevail today?
3. Given all the concern about the future of learning in an increasingly AI-driven world and the accelerating disconnect between formal education and the pursuit of one’s livelihood,isinstitutional learning even possible any longer?
4. In what measure should a projected AI-future be factored into both our diagnoses and proposed remedies?
5. What role does, or should, government play in trying to “fix” our present learning structures,  formats, and modalities?
6. What is the difference between “learning” and “education” in the current environment? Does the distinction really matter?
7. What is meant by “critical thinking” or “critical intelligence”?  To what degree and in what guises is the 
   “critical” perspective vital for the transformation of learning?
8.  How are the different conventional canons for gradating and characterizing learning environments (K-12, post-secondary, graduate, “gifted and talented”, etc.) germane to the future of learning, and how do they interface any longer with the explosion of available knowledge in an open, online format? 

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