I have observed that those involved long-term in the business of mainstream education become habitually ‘weathered’ by its idiosyncrasies. I have also observed that underlying educational dogma, systematic inflexibility and exclusive practices (figuring as the most likely causes which… have made the system so resistant to and inadequate for wide-ranging change) is (and has always been) the issue of power dynamics.

I thoroughly welcome the opportunity to critically examine where ‘we’* are heading in education. The ‘future’ discussion day prompted me to consider my own practice as an informal media educator and researcher. I am an advocate of the potential of informal education approaches in encouraging inclusive, participatory practice that seeks to encourage people to develop their own learning, on their own terms.

Therein lies maybe the strongest message of the day for me. Sat, listening to the dialogue stemming from the digital inclusion session, there was a congruence of thinking which positively affirmed practitioners facilitating (as opposed to the didactic implications which have been associated which teaching) young people’s choice and participation through digitally mediated processes in an educational context.

“… Once you have learned how to ask questions – relevant and appropriate and substantial questions – you have learned how to learn and no-one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know…” Len Masterman, Teaching Television. 1985. In summary the future vision might be described as one where … all children and young people could be meaningfully ‘schooled’ in the business of critical thinking, given the tools by which they can access opportunities to direct their own learning on the basis of interest and relevance, and engage in a dialogic process with their facilitators of learning… (in the stylings of what has been recognised as an informal approach). In this scenario, ‘learning’ would just be learning, neither a formal or informal dichotomy rather characterised as seamless flow. Returning to the notion of power which in its state of inequity produces educational disadvantage, an inclusive approach by contrast recognizes and values the importance of every citizen’s right to self and societal awareness and definition.

Adults, in general, assume and exact the power to define widespread notions about childhood and youth. The proliferation of digital technologies amid the backdrop of increased consumerism and marketing to young people has fused to make a potent, often partaken, cocktail of moral and ethical panic regarding how young people are perceived and understood in society. The resulting dualism, of course, is neither realistic or helpful… typically either young people are savvy, adept individuals who are routinely posited as capable of duping and surpassing their parents and carers using digital means, (and/) or, they are vulnerable to such forces (based on a predicated notion of their essential innocence) and therefore calls for protection abound.

Digital technologies, when coupled with a participatory approach to learning, can help to make manifest development and change in terms of young people’s educational experiences through the building of social and cultural capital.

Though the degree of participation on offer requires critical examination. For example, the collective ‘We’* who are charged with visioning the future for education, must therefore include the contribution of children and young people themselves.

In our exhortations of frustration about the current system and in our advocacy of how it should be, precisely who has the power to define what and who is valued vis-a-vis education would appear to lie at the crux of the issue.

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