The SM Foundation and the Interamerican University invite you to the presentation of the UNESCO Report Reimagining our Futures Together: A new social contract for education.

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There is little that distinguishes the organization of a classroom across the world in traditional schools: students seated at desks or tables, a teacher in charge of giving the lesson while the children listen and, occasionally, ask questions.

It is a system that views students as passive recipients of knowledge and was established more than 150 years ago to serve societies that were just beginning to industrialize, said Elisa Guerra Cruz, a member of the UNESCO International Commission for the "Futures of Education" global report.

“The school model still functions very similarly to a factory—a mass production line—as if we took all the children and in the first year we gave them one eye, in the second year both eyes, in the third year some hair, and that is how we form them. But no. It is a model that has fallen short because the world is no longer as it was 150 years ago; it is not even as it was two years ago. Therefore, that model, that school grammar, is no longer working, and it hasn't been working for a long time,” said the educator, who specializes in Early Childhood Education.

“The way we teach children has to change. We see knowledge as this ethereal thing that is just there, and somehow I have to cram it into the child's head. But what we see, what we already know, is that knowledge is generated and regenerated every day at unprecedented speeds. So we have to stop seeing children as recipients of knowledge, because it's about creating knowledge. It’s not just teaching them; it’s about them learning how to create,” she added.

Improving education requires the effort of many, not just the individuals and entities that are linked, day to day, with schools, she noted.

Last year, UNESCO published the report “Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education,” which presents a diagnostic of the most pressing problems in education while opening the floor for a discussion on how to address them. This report was translated into Spanish by the SM Foundation and published in May 2022.

“The way we organize education around expectations is what the social contract is. I send my child to school and expect them to be taught this and that; the school receives the child but expects the parent to do this; we all expect the government to provide the necessary resources and for organizations to meet these expectations. We need a new social contract with education,” she expressed.

The report does not present a roadmap or a list of recommendations on how to solve educational problems, as it recognizes that individualized plans must be developed for each country, each region, and even each school, Guerra Cruz indicated. Furthermore, any idea generated in 2021 could become obsolete by the following year, she argued.

Nonetheless, the founder of the Colegio Valle de Filadelfia—which she established in Mexico but now has a presence in four other Latin American countries—highlighted that there are challenges to be tackled, such as the lack of relevance of educational content for younger generations.

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But current successes are also highlighted, such as the recognition in recent years of the importance of early childhood education and socio-emotional learning.

“We must consider the expansion of knowledge and reach everyone, inside and outside of school; and, in very general terms, we speak of futures in the plural because we do not believe that a single future is the only path forward for our students. There is a diversity of futures that we want to propose so that every young person can access them,” noted Guerra Cruz, following a presentation of the report to leaders from local universities, private schools, and the Department of Education.

The General Director of the SM Foundation Puerto Rico, Juan Reyes Pérez, highlighted the level of commitment among local educational leaders to rethinking the educational model, to the point that there is already an invitation to continue the discussion at the Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico.

“I would like for both the report and the lessons from the pandemic to encourage the teachers out there, those who work day-to-day with their students, who perhaps have a 'crazy' idea or feel insecure... I want them to know that you don't have to ask permission to innovate; you have to dare to do it. It is a matter of trial and error, trial and error, but in one of those attempts, you can refine a great idea. That is where true changes come from—not at the desks of Ministers of Education, but at the desk of every student,” expressed Guerra Cruz.