Time and education

Time has always been a central feature of formal education: in the control of the school day and in the aims of education, which are future-oriented. Today, the future that education is predicated upon is highly uncertain, giving renewed urgency to the question of how to provide an education that meets current and future challenges. This has been met with several attempts to reimagine education that often fall short. Many offer idealistic visions of the future that do not fully address the political economy of climate change, poverty and inequality, and how these influence potential changes. Adding to this, the exercise of reimagining the future hardly ever speaks to the role of time as experienced by students in different parts of the world, and what the current warping of social time and that of life on the planet means for education. Our contribution will focus on how climate change, poverty and inequality affect students’ experience of time and future abilities, and what this means for education.