To­day is the UN’s In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Ed­u­ca­tion. The theme is: The pow­er of youth in co-cre­at­ing ed­u­ca­tion. The right to ed­u­ca­tion is en­shrined in a num­ber of doc­u­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­ti­cle 26 of the Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights and in the Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child.

Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 4 aims, by 2030, to en­sure in­clu­sive and eq­ui­table qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion and pro­mote life­long learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for all. How­ev­er, it is like­ly that we will not achieve this goal, due, for ex­am­ple, to pover­ty, dis­crim­i­na­tion, gen­der in­equity, armed con­flict, mi­gra­tion, forcible dis­place­ment and the ef­fects of cli­mate change.

The UN re­minds us that “ed­u­ca­tion is a pub­lic good and a pub­lic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty...Youth make up more than half of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion and are a pow­er­ful en­gine for in­no­va­tion, so­cial change and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

Yet many still face per­sis­tent bar­ri­ers that hold them back from shap­ing the fu­ture they want — from pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty to lim­it­ed ac­cess to qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion and de­cent work. Be­cause their lives and op­por­tu­ni­ties are di­rect­ly shaped by ed­u­ca­tion, young peo­ple must be ac­tive part­ners in reimag­in­ing how learn­ing works. As tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to trans­form the world, in­volv­ing youth in co-cre­at­ing mod­ern, rel­e­vant and in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems is es­sen­tial to en­sure teach­ing and learn­ing tru­ly meet their as­pi­ra­tions...

“Ed­u­ca­tion of­fers chil­dren a lad­der out of pover­ty and a path to a promis­ing fu­ture. But about 244 mil­lion chil­dren and ado­les­cents around the world are out of school; 617 mil­lion chil­dren and ado­les­cents can­not read and do ba­sic math; less than 40% of girls in sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa com­plete low­er sec­ondary school and some four mil­lion chil­dren and youth refugees are out of school. Their right to ed­u­ca­tion is be­ing vi­o­lat­ed and it is un­ac­cept­able.

With­out in­clu­sive and eq­ui­table qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion and life­long op­por­tu­ni­ties for all, coun­tries will not suc­ceed in achiev­ing gen­der equal­i­ty and break­ing the cy­cle of pover­ty that is leav­ing mil­lions of chil­dren, youth and adults be­hind.”

T&T’s for­mer Pres­i­dent, Paula-Mae Weekes, said years ago: “It is time to do a com­plete over­haul of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem if we are to have any chance of pro­duc­ing the in­di­vid­u­als that we want and need to lead this coun­try in­to the fu­ture.”

It’s im­per­a­tive to in­volve youth in this over­haul. T&T’s youth them­selves must recog­nise that our sys­tem is not geared to prepar­ing in­di­vid­u­als for our tech-dri­ven world.

A use­ful doc­u­ment is the UN’s Youth De­c­la­ra­tion on Trans­form­ing Ed­u­ca­tion. It con­tains young peo­ple’s col­lec­tive views, rec­om­men­da­tions, and com­mit­ments on trans­form­ing ed­u­ca­tion - a trans­for­ma­tion that is “sys­temic, long-term, in­clu­sive, and rep­re­sen­ta­tive.” It fo­cus­es on youth as ac­tive and equal part­ners.

Many of our youth in T&T are dig­i­tal na­tives/cit­i­zens and are way ahead of our ed­u­ca­tors in de­vel­op­ing - on their own, 21st-cen­tu­ry skills, for ex­am­ple, crit­i­cal think­ing, prob­lem solv­ing, dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and adapt­abil­i­ty, along­side tra­di­tion­al sub­jects.

We must em­pow­er youth and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for them to be co-cre­ators in ed­u­ca­tion. In­ter alia, they can bring their knowl­edge and their lived ex­pe­ri­ences to as­sist in cur­ricu­lum de­sign, as­sess­ment re­form, cre­at­ing pro­grammes to fos­ter re­spon­si­ble, eth­i­cal, and pos­i­tive on­line en­gage­ment, in­clud­ing pri­va­cy, safe­ty, and dig­i­tal eti­quette, in em­bed­ding dig­i­tal tools and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies across the cur­ricu­lum and in build­ing more eq­ui­table learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments.

When I was study­ing for my Mas­ters in Ed­u­ca­tion in Lon­don, I read Pro­fes­sor Ab­n­er J. Ped­di­well’s The Sabre-Tooth Cur­ricu­lum (1939). This “hu­mourous fa­ble” comes to mind as we con­sid­er the de­fi­cien­cies in our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. It “sum­maris­es the sto­ry of a com­mu­ni­ty whose orig­i­nal cur­ricu­lum fo­cused on skills need­ed for sur­vival, such as catch­ing fish, hunt­ing hors­es, and fight­ing off tigers. How­ev­er, en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions changed, re­quir­ing new skills like us­ing nets to catch fish and traps to catch bears. When at­tempts were made to up­date the cur­ricu­lum, they met stern op­po­si­tion from el­ders who be­lieved the cur­ricu­lum should re­main time­less and fo­cus on more gen­er­alised skills rather than di­rect train­ing.”

Re­search­Gate, the spe­cialised so­cial me­dia net­work­ing site, urges us to shift “from hi­er­ar­chi­cal ‘I teach, you lis­ten’ to rec­i­p­ro­cal ‘We learn to­geth­er’.” This shift “builds stu­dent agency, mak­ing them feel like fu­ture pro­fes­sion­als, not just cogs.”

UN­ESCO right­ly notes that youth can be­come “agents of change, de­vel­op lead­er­ship, dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy, and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty through col­lab­o­ra­tive projects ... With­out in­clu­sive and eq­ui­table qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion and life­long op­por­tu­ni­ties for all, coun­tries will not suc­ceed in achiev­ing gen­der equal­i­ty and break­ing the cy­cle of pover­ty that is leav­ing mil­lions of chil­dren, youth and adults be­hind.”

Let’s act now!