Dear Mirror Networkers,
Asia has been a wake up call.
Singapore showed me how education can be promoted, groomed, tailored, managed, and placed at the center of a nation’s development strategy in every possible way.
Cambodia showed me how education remains the most basic condition for individuals to be free, to have a chance at leading their lives independently and for a group to become a community and eventually a country.
Technology and soft skills are key both in the developing world and in advanced places. They are key to unlock people’s potential to design the future and adapt to a very fast-paced world. Asia is buzzing, Asia is doing, Asia is planning ahead. But Asia questions, Asia doubts, Asia has trouble finding its balance.
In no longer then two weeks, I touched the sky and I experienced the ground. Over this first Asian step of the Mirror Network summer world tour, I was lucky enough to meet with teachers, consultants, entrepreneurs, counselors, musicians, students, voluntary workers, business people, people working in administration, in the public and private sectors, in schools, companies and ngos, people of all ages and from very diverse backgrounds and nationalities. A huge thanks to all of them for welcoming me, sharing their stories and passion and teaching me that education is indeed the corner stone of our societies, especially now when we are all enquiring why.
Why learn? Why teach? Why accelerate people and projects?
We are used to providing answers, through science, through religion, through dreams and actions. Thinking about the answers makes us feel more safe and in control of our destiny. The Y-generation started disrupting this well establish model. Now whys are everywhere and there are the reason for more and more people to push new frontiers trying to find new answers. It all results in an abundance of answers that we find difficult to prioritize, link, organize.
Maybe the 21st century should be about asking questions? Maybe we should be less afraid to ask even if we are not getting an immediate answer? Maybe the path towards a world more balanced and at peace lies in our ability to ask the right questions?
What would be your first question?
Mine is: what is happening in the US that is radically changing the way education is conceived, delivered and improved?
And I am about to find out, starting with San Francisco!
Please go to the Mirror Network Facebook group to read about all Asian discoveries and see the pictures.
With joy to start off your week,
Léa