Today I want to discuss some topics that preoccupy my current studies and research. I will start from the concept of “education for tomorrow”, a heading that forms a subfield of futures studies. When I think about education for tomorrow and cognition, one aspect stands out: human beings are constantly changing. We neither are nor think like our ancestors, and the person of tomorrow, whether teacher or student, will not either.
Our brain, like the whole system that makes up the human being, this complex of cells, organs, mind and subtler levels, is in a continuous process of adapting to the world around us. These changes, often epigenetic, have repercussions for future generations. The experience of social distancing we lived through during the pandemic did not end with the crisis; it reverberated in us subtly and is already changing how we feel and think, with echoes that will reach future generations, placing us in a system of unpredictability.
When I watch, for example, a four-year-old handling a mobile phone in a way unimaginable a few decades ago, I realize we are facing a new child, one who no longer fits how this term, this sign, was modelled decades ago. This makes me reflect, because I also have children who recently went through that age. I remember that at four I was very different from previous generations, just as a four-year-old in the Middle Ages or in ancient Rome was someone else. This line of thought reveals our tendency to take ourselves as the reference when we imagine the past, in traditional or fictional ways. We say “that’s not how it was done”, but that “how” always refers to ourselves, to our own history, to our own fabulation of what is or was, if there is such a thing as “is or was”. It rests on an assumption, already refuted by numerous studies, that our memories are trustworthy; they are not.
What we call “traditional” is a construction as changeable as our bodies and minds. When we think about a new education today, we are already dealing with something that will be born obsolete for future generations. Any projective study starts from our own self-reference. This should not be seen as scepticism, quite the opposite. Being aware of this constant change means understanding that we are the only species, as far as has been shown, capable of metacognitive processes: of thinking about ourselves and about the very act of thinking. This trait, which sets us apart, also allows us to project the future for teachers and students, the agents of education for tomorrow.
When I reflect on cognition in this context, two approaches catch my attention. The first concerns the narrative forms through which future generations will express and interpret the world. The second involves analysing the changes in the mental representations at work today. Returning to the four-year-old with a phone, this child is already adapting to a technology that organizes global discourse in a completely different way. This affects their capacity to interpret and make sense of the world, because when interacting with the device they choose, select and take an active part in the process of world-building. This kind of interaction differs from that of someone who grew up with the technology of the printed book, for example.
By adapting cognitively to a universe in which their intervention is essential for content to update (if they don’t tap, nothing happens), this child develops a new kind of relationship with technology. Their position in relation to the device is different, and they go through such a fast and constant process of selection and filtering that the act of choosing is often valued over critical reflection on what is being chosen and why.
I should stress that I am not opposed to mobile phones or to technology in general. The issue I raise is a line of thought present since the 1960s, when McLuhan argued that the medium through which we access the world directly shapes how we build representations and interpret.
The second question that provokes and troubles me is the analysis of changes in mental representations. If we assume that a receiver’s understanding of a discourse involves the expression of a mental model of the sender, it falls to the receiver to draw a new interpretive synthesis from that discourse. Understanding these changes, both synchronic and diachronic, is therefore essential for prospective studies. In other words, when we deal with a technological resource that conveys certain content, we are facing a product, the content, created from other mental models and carrying with it a model of worldview, a modelling process. Yet when I interpret the content, I do so through a negotiation between the given models and my own mental schemas, and the outcome of this fast conflict, imperceptible to our consciousness, is our final understanding, our synthesis.
The mental models I refer to are like cognitive architectures, built throughout life from experiences, perceptions and acquired knowledge. They are consolidated in our central system, more specifically in memory. When I speak of the need to study these changes diachronically and synchronically, I mean studying specific cohorts, such as the generations of 2000 or 2010, as well as major historical transformations, such as the shift from orality to writing, from writing to the digital, and the many other technological interfaces, such as virtual reality and immersive media.
Thinking about education for tomorrow requires attention to these changes, because they occur in a space of symbolic conflict where different generations collide, bringing different ways of thinking and acting. Being at school today is different from being at school in the 1950s, just as being a craftsman’s apprentice in the Middle Ages was different. We do not only think differently while we learn; we are transformed along the way. My main interest, then, is to understand this space of constant transformation and what it means for education and cognition. Other topics, such as cognitive schemas, are also relevant, but I will leave them for another time. In this text, my focus is on models.
These mental models, built throughout life, influence how we interpret the world around us and how we relate to knowledge. By analysing how these models evolve, both synchronically, within the same generation, and diachronically, over time, we can better understand how different ways of thinking and learning develop. For example, the transition from oral societies to writing, and from writing to the digital, brought profound changes in how we organize and transmit knowledge.
Today these transformations are accelerating, with the emergence of new interfaces such as immersive media and virtual reality. These technologies offer new ways of organizing content, challenging established mental models and creating new learning paradigms. When thinking about education for tomorrow, it is essential to understand these changes, because they are not just conflicts between generations but collisions between different ways of thinking and being in the world. We often find reflections on the entanglement of technology and education framed as “for” and “against”. The question, however, should not be posed in such Manichaean terms. Understanding the changes is as important as, or more important than, advocating positions. In many educational studies, a priori positions (for or against) rest on loose subjectivity, without evidence.
The experience of learning itself also changes, not because this or that method is introduced, but because of changes in worldview, in the perception of what it means to be in the world. Being in a classroom today is a unique experience, absolutely distinct from other times in ways that are both positive and negative. The classroom of tomorrow, like that of yesterday, follows the same pattern: it will be, is and was different from its status quo ante, from what came before it. Learning involves a constant clash between our cultural baggage and the new information we receive. It is in this space of conflict that personal and cognitive growth and transformation take place: new syntheses generated from symbolic conflicts and unpredictability.
Understanding these changes, and what they mean for education and for the development of cognition in contemporary educational contexts, is therefore what interests me. We cannot navigate without an instrument that shows us the way: the stars. Understanding paradigm shifts in this sense is a sine qua non for thinking about an education for tomorrow, since to think about tomorrow I must first be open to feeling and understanding today beyond common sense.
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