Educating for the Future: Empowering the Human Mind and Redefining Values and Citizenship in the Age of Technological Disruption*

What are the goals of education, and how should they be interpreted in our time? The challenges posed by the emergence of technologies like Artificial Intelligence demand a renewed reflection on the nature and scope of the educational process, in order to address the question of how to educate the human mind to cope with these problems and opportunities. The aim of this paper is to explore a framework for the relationship between education, values and new technologies within the present social and economic context. In it, the role of rationality, emotions, empathy, creativity and the possibility of developing a broader concept of “mind” for empowering human beings and helping us to better understand ourselves and the world will also be examined. In essence, the paper contains a summary of the main ideas discussed in the Fifth Altius conference on “Educating for the Future” at the Oxford Union,† which took place between September 28 and 30, 2018.‡ Due to the Chatham House Rule requirements, attribution has been avoided. Thus, the report is focused on the presentation of the most relevant concepts and arguments expressed by the speakers and exchanged with the audience. In any case, the report is not exhaustive and it does not necessarily reflect the order of events followed at the Oxford Union. Rather, it is aimed at exposing, in a concise manner, the principal themes that were explored during the conference and the key practical suggestions drawn from different sessions