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This IdeasLAB blog is part of a series leading up to the launch of a publication on the theme of “renewing the social contract for education.” The theme of the series is based on the call from the report . See , and look for the full special issue in to be released in early 2024. 

By António Nóvoa

We are living in times of profound transformation in education. It’s not just a question of skills, methods or organization. It’s a deeper process that questions the very foundations of the social contract of school modernity signed in the 19^th century. We don’t know what the future will look like, but there are already all the signs, both negative and positive, that herald fundamental changes in education. 

Education is defined over a “very long history” spanning centuries and centuries. But in the 19^th century, education was configured around: compulsory schooling imposed by the states, schools within well-defined physical boundaries and a school model based on the classroom and the teacher’s lesson. 

The Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900 can be seen as a symbol of this social contract, placing education at the top of the pyramid of the different branches of human activity. The reason is simple. According to Alfred Picard, Commissioner General of the Exhibition, education is “the source of all progress” (1900, p. 1).

The long school century lasted until the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, it became clear what had already been present since the turn of the century (Nóvoa, 2023):

• firstly, education has to be thought of in a much broader timeframe than “compulsory schooling”, ceasing to be just a preparation for life and becoming a vital dimension of human existence;

• secondly, education cannot be confined within limited physical boundaries, even less so with the new digital reality, but must open up to a capillarity of spaces and times; 

• thirdly, education is expressed in a diversity of forms and processes which, while recognizing the importance of the classroom and the teacher’s lesson, go far beyond them and have the work of the students as their central axis.

We need to be very careful with futuristic delusions that propose education without schools and teachers, visions that imagine infinite digital possibilities and dematerialization of the educational endeavor. This would be a tragic mistake for the future. The school is a remarkable historical construction and needs to be protected. The teacher-student relationship is a unique heritage of humanity. 

Privatizing tendencies, for example, seek to redefine the educational relationship as a consumer relationship, between a service provider and a client, accentuating, at all costs, the individual dimensions, to the detriment of the collective dimensions. But there is no education outside of a public and common dimension.

The best way to counteract these and other misguided and dangerous tendencies is to maintain an impetus for transformation. It is not a question of rejecting the social contract of school modernity, which is still unfulfilled in so many parts of the world, but of renewing it and giving it a new life. We will only be able to protect the education institutions if we can transform it and project it onto new foundations for the future. How? We need to be inspired by the countless experiences and projects that exist worldwide. We need to be able to turn these still piecemeal and fragmented efforts into a movement to transform education, with the formation of a new social contract.

Five concepts can allow us to anticipate central aspects of the renewal of the social contract for education: cooperation, convergence, collaboration, conviviality and capillarity.

• Cooperation as the basis of pedagogy. The idea of educational cooperation is very old. While the pedagogical relationship between a teacher and a student is one of the primary sources of education, students also learn from each other. For this, we need new educational environments that facilitate learning and cooperation. Perhaps libraries and laboratories, for example, are a good inspiration for organizing the school spaces of the “present future,” a future that is already present in many of today’s realities.

• Convergence as the axis of the curriculum. The curriculum debate is often only about the arrangement of subjects or the so-called transition between knowledge and skills. We need to go further in this debate, addressing two fundamental convergences for the future. 

On the one hand, there is the convergence between disciplines along the lines of the “convergence revolution” as advocated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2011). When a teacher teaches mathematics or physics, he/she imagines that he/she is transmitting “constituted” knowledge, which is often already “deprived” due to scientific evolution (Stiegler, 2018). The defense of convergence is consistent with pedagogical work around themes and problems, capable of valuing the “knowledge commons” and aligning with the major scientific and cultural developments of our time. At the same time, the convergence between the cognitive and emotional dimensions is a need made even more evident by the pandemic. 

• Collaboration as a reference for the teaching profession. Teachers are a central pillar of the social contract of modernity, particularly when, from the mid-19^th century, they began to be trained specifically for the profession. Today, we have seen a certain dilution of teaching professionality, feeding the idea that teachers are expendable, replaced by various technologies or techniques. 

Contemporary challenges require a strengthening of the collaborative dimensions of the teaching profession. The collective identity of the profession also requires fundamental changes: in initial teacher education, with new training environments in “third spaces” (Zeichner, 2010), bringing together universities and schools; in the professional induction period, with a greater presence and participation of experienced teachers; as well as in continuous teacher education, with activities organized around reflection on pedagogical experiences and transformative initiatives. 

• Conviviality as a central element of the school. School is not just a place for learning; it is also a place for education. Each student’s freedom and path depend on a relationship with others. The French philosopher Reboul (1971) rightly said it: school is for us to be free and not to be alone. Amid a world of fragmentation, school is one of the few institutions that we still have left to try to live a common life, a common humanity. 

School is not a service; it is an institution. Students are not clients; they are subjects working towards their education and that of others. This is why the idea of conviviality, formulated in 1973 by Illich, is decisive for thinking about school. Talking about conviviality means talking about dialogue, democracy, participation and co-construction, where people learn and also learn to live with others.

• Capillarity as an intergenerational educational reality. We need to look critically at the concept of ubiquity, which induces the idea that education takes place at all times and places. The use of this concept often tends to weaken the role of schools and teachers, suggesting that learning can be done more effectively at home, in the digital world or other environments. More useful is the concept of capillarity, especially if we think of it based on a network of educational possibilities and opportunities built with the school.

It is important to recognize the relevance of the “city” – the “city” as a metaphor for territory and participation – as a means of education, which therefore refers to a principle of citizenship. Knowing that the demographic revolution, with an increase in life expectancy beyond 100 years in the coming decades, is the most important of our times, we can easily understand the need to consider education as a vital dimension of human existence. If we go back to Illich (1971), it is about reappropriating the ability to decide on education that, in a sense, specialized education systems have taken away from citizens. Thinking about the idea of capillarity within the framework of a renewed social contract for education implies valuing not only the school stricto sensu but also a wider public education space.

Building a new social contract for education, or rather renewing the social contract for education, is a complex process that involves society as a whole. Nothing will be done through injunctions or regulations alone, but rather from the knowledge and public sharing of countless experiences taking place worldwide. These experiences need to be known, analyzed and debated. To do this, there needs to be an increased research effort, with the production of professional and scientific knowledge that supports the paths of transformation. 

At a time when everyone is announcing change, sometimes with delusional proposals, we need to respect the role and place of schools and teachers instead of imagining a “brave new world” that would dispense with them. Even less so when this “brave new world” conveys mercantilist and consumerist visions of education. It would be a step backwards, not forward. If there were a break in the school’s historical project, we would not just lose a generation; we would lose one of humanity’s most important assets. It is not just the future of the school that is at stake; it is the future of our common humanity. 

Never before has it been so urgent for education to contribute to the democratization of societies, reduce inequalities in access to knowledge and culture and build participatory forms of deliberation. We know, at least since Dewey, that democracy is more than a form of government: “It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (1916, p. 101). School should be a space of freedom in which we work together. Without being naive, we must answer the question posed by Dubet and Duru-Bellat (2020) in the affirmative: Yes, schools can help save democracy.

Reimagining education involves three movements: thinking of education as a vital element of human existence and not just as preparation for that existence; conceiving of education beyond the physical boundaries defined by the modern school and understanding its intrusion into city life; building new educational environments that allow for pedagogical processes based on cooperative work between students, between students and teachers, and between teachers. This is the time to create – that is, to collectively build another education. We must inspire each other. It is not a question of starting from scratch but rather of patiently and participatively building a metamorphosis, a change in the shape of school and education. For this, we need the most important of all virtues: courage.