SCHOOL, LISTENING TO THE PRESENT TO BUILD THE FUTURE. Reimagining the grammar of change

School in a changing world

“Our humanity and planet Earth are under threat. (…) We face a dual challenge of making good on the unfulfilled promise to ensure the right to quality education for every child, youth and adult and fully realizing the transformational potential of education as a route for sustainable collective futures.”

This is the opening sentence of the report published by UNESCO in 2021, “Reimagining our futures together. A new contract for education.” It is a much more alarming opening than that of the well-known reports that preceded it: that of the Faure Commission, entitled “Learning to Be: The World of Education Today and Tomorrow,” from 1972, which proposed lifelong learning as a guiding concept for educational policies, and that of the Delors Commission from 1996, “Learning: The Treasure Within,” (Learning: The Treasure Within), with its four pillars of education—learning to know, to do, to live together, and to be—and the hope for integral human development and the construction of more just, supportive, and peaceful societies.

Today, old and new forces of fragmentation are manifesting themselves in all areas of life: from the proliferation of wars that suggest a piecemeal Third World War, to climate change, from unregulated globalization to growing inequalities and , from the erosion of democracy and international law to the acceleration of technological development and AI that risks ousting human beings, from the “echo chambers” created by social media to the increase in mental suffering that particularly affects young people.

Schools are part of this society and cannot help but be fully affected by these multiple crises, but—despite failing to deliver on the promise of guaranteeing quality education for all and laying the foundations for a sustainable future—they are still recognized as a space where change  can be reimagined and built. 

Broken promises

François Dubet, a prominent French sociologist who has spoken at ADi seminars on several occasions, has analyzed in depth this “unfulfilled promise” of education. He argues that the long process of massification of education since the 1960s has only partially fulfilled the three main promises on which it was based: the promise of greater social justice, the promise of developing ‘human capital,’ and the promise of advancing the democratic spirit.

Two types of explanations have been put forward to account for why these promises have been broken: ‘endogenous’ explanations, which blame the school systems themselves for not acting correctly; and ‘exogenous’ explanations, which attribute the difficulties of schools to changes in society that have worked against them. However, neither type of explanation calls into question what Dubet and Duru-Bellat, in their latest work[1] , define as the emprise of the school, its dominance: an emprise linked to the importance of diplomas in individual careers, the monopoly of schools in defining merit, the dichotomy between winners and losers in meritocracy, the impact of schools on work, and finally the ‘colonization’ of education by the ‘form’ that schools take. Without questioning the emprise of the school, the solution that tends to be proposed is to strengthen it: give more school, start earlier, and stay in school longer.

Referring to Ivan Ilyich’s thinking, Dubet puts forward the hypothesis that it is precisely this dominance that transforms the nature of school and weakens education: “In the same way that an excess of industry and mobility destroys nature, or an excess of drugs weakens health , an excess of school emprise kills education”[2] .  To lighten the burden of school and its unintended effects, Dubet and Duru-Bellat say that, paradoxically, “more education” is needed: “opening schools to other values and talents and encouraging the diversification of merits to loosen the grip of school”[3] , but also giving up the monopoly of the current school structure, for example, by including skills that are not solely those of academic success in guidance, and opening up training and education to other subjects.

The necessary change

The issues are complex, as always. What is certain is that we cannot move forward by looking backwards, guided by nostalgia for the past, and we cannot simply do more of the same, aiming to perpetuate and strengthen the school system created in the industrial age. We see examples of both these reactions today, both inside and outside schools, in Italy and globally.

History and experience teach us, however, that what the crisis requires is to look ahead, to ‘learn from the emerging future’[4] , as Otto Scharmer proposes with what he has christened ‘Theory U’, a future that needs us to materialize. This requires us to slow down, listen to reality with an ‘open’ mind, possibly placing ourselves on the margins of the system, where information is richer and more often ignored, in order to understand what should be let go, what should be kept, and what should be welcomed and cultivated anew.

This will be the theme of our seminar in February 2026.

The three sessions

As always, the seminar will be divided into three sessions: Friday, February 27, morning; Friday, February 27, afternoon; and Saturday, February 28, morning.

Theoretical reflections, approaches, practices, and stories that show the journey of change will be presented.

First session –  In search of a new “grammar” of change
Friday, February 27, morning

In the first session, coordinated by Giulia Guglielmini, President of the Fondazione per la Scuola, and Giacomo Armigliato, a fourth-year student at Liceo Minghetti in Bologna, we will look at how change happens.  Do the mechanisms and strategies of change in nature have something to tell us? What is the path of change in schools, from the initial idea to its full development? How does change take shape in “social fields,” what is the “blind spot” of our movement, and what is the starting point? What does awareness have to do with change?

Telmo Pievani, Professor of Philosophy of Biological Sciences, Bioethics, and Naturalistic Dissemination at the University of Padua, will talk about strategies for change in nature; teachers and students (insert names) from the Liceo Vitruvio high school in Avezzano will recount their journey of change; the voices of some primary school students will help us see things from their point of view; Otto Scharmer, senior lecturer at MIT Boston and co-founder of the Presencing Institute, will talk about Theory U, which offers a framework, a method, and a new narrative of change; Caromai Bouquet, mindfulness trainer, will introduce and guide a participatory experience.

Second session – Beyond the myth of irreconcilable alternatives
Friday, February 27, afternoon

The second session, coordinated by Francesco Manfredi, President of INDIRE, and Silvia Collacciani, a first-year student of Aerospace Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin, will propose approaches to change that bring together often conflicting needs as alternatives. How can external assessment data be reconciled with creativity and autonomy in teaching? How can attitudes, enthusiasm, and professional development of teachers be aligned? How has Italy changed over the last 60 years, how have young people changed, and what can schools focus on today? Under what conditions can a difference be made in difficult schools?

Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America and CEO of Teach for ALL, will talk about the journey that led her from observing the choices made by students at the best American colleges to founding Teach for America and then Teach for All. Alessandro Rosina, Professor of Demography and Social Statistics at the Catholic University of Milan and scientific coordinator of the Youth Observatory of the G. Toniolo Institute, will talk about the social, economic, and anthropological changes in Italy from the 1960s to today and what young people of Gen Z and the Alpha generation are asking for today; the voices of some secondary school students will help us see things from their point of view;  Kathrin Parker Boudett, senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, will talk about her twenty years of work on using assessment data as a starting point for collaboration and improvement; Arnoldo Mosca Mondadori, President of the Casa dello Spirito e delle Arti Foundation, will present the Metamorfosi project, featuring the instruments of the Orchestra del Mare built from the wood of migrant boats by inmates of the Milan Opera, Monza, and Naples Secondigliano prisons.

Third session – Trends and possible futures
Saturday, February 28, morning

The third session will analyze change at the system level, outlining trends and possible scenarios based on international data and perspectives.

Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education and Skills at the OECD, will talk to us about future scenarios for school systems and, in this context, teachers’ expectations; Hai Siang Chia, Senior Specialist at the Singapore Ministry of Education, will outline the transformations and adaptations being implemented by one of the school systems at the top of the PISA rankings in the face of the disruptive arrival of Artificial Intelligence. Ron Berger, teacher, carpenter, author, and senior advisor at EL Education, will talk about how great teachers are not born but made, and about the ethics of excellence.

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[1] François Dubet and Marie Duru-Bellat, L’emprise scolaire. Quand trop d’école tue l’éducation (The Influence of School: When Too Much School Kills Education), 2024, Presses
  De Sciences Po,

[2] Dubet and Duru-Bellat, op. cit. p. 17.

[3] Ibid., p. 199.

[4] Otto Scharmer, Theory U. The Fundamentals, 2018, Guerini Next, p. 30.