More young people will be radicalised unless schools change, Pisa boss warns
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More young people will be radicalised unless schools change, Pisa boss warns
“More of the same education” will not be enough to stop disenfranchised young people who attend schools in some of the most high-performing systems in the world from becoming radicalised and joining Islamic State, Pisa boss Andreas Schleicher has warned
Mr Schleicher - who has also argued in the past that pupils should be taught to recognise “fake news” - was speaking at an international education summit being held in Edinburgh on empowering teachers to improve outcomes in schools.
He told the conference - attended by delegations of minsters of education from over 20 countries including England and Scotland: “Disenfranchised young people who are part of the countries assembled here have joined Islamic State.
“The fact that some of those young people ticked all the boxes of formal education and did everything we asked them to means it’s not as simple as more of the same education for them.”
Westminster terror attacker Adrian Elms - who changed his name to Khalid Masood when he converted to Islam - was born in England and went to school in Tunbridge Wells in Kent. He killed five people and injured 50 when he mowed down members of the public with a car on Westminster Bridge last week, before fatally stabbing unarmed Pc Keith Palmer.
While police have identified no link with IS, they say his attack method echoes the rhetoric of IS leaders.
Education systems needed to give young people the things that “distinguish humans from technology”, Mr Schleicher, the OECD’s director of education and skills, said - they needed to nurture creativity and teach about aesthetics, design and civic life, and give pupils the ability to see the world from different perspectives.
It was often said that schools could not “cure the problems of our societies”, he continued. However, he went on to argue that was exactly what we should expect schools to do.
He told Tes: “What else do we expect from school other than to solve the problems of today? The kind of pretence that we can somehow isolate schools from the real world is a dangerous one.
“It leads precisely to the growing disconnect between the world of work and the world of learning, a growing disconnect between social problems and education problems, and I think that is a huge challenge.”
He added: “There are young people who have gone through all of what we think is right for them and they just don’t engage with us - they don’t see the value of pluralism and an outlooking perspective.
“This is not just essential from a social perspective it’s also essential from an economic perspective. Innovation today comes from you connecting the dots; being able to think across the disciplinary boundaries.”
Fred van Leeuwen, general secretary of Education International, also called on teachers to address the “half-truths and outright lies” that were “challenging the resilience of our democratic institutions”, saying education was one of the “best ways to confront these turbulent times”
The International Summit on the Teaching Profession is an annual event that brings together government and teaching professionals from high performing systems. It began in New York in 2011; the theme for 2017 is empowering and enabling teachers to deliver greater equity and improved outcomes for all.
The summit continues until tomorrow.