Since 1960, the world’s population has more than doubled. Average life expectancy increased by 50 percent and income per person tripled. The share of people living in extreme poverty declined from 54 percent to 10 percent (data are available through 2018, pre-pandemic). Technology revolutionized how we communicate, how we travel, and even what we eat. For people in China and India, the changes have been especially dramatic.

This progress didn’t result from miracle—it was through investment in education, research, and development. It came because most governments dedicated themselves to the idea—framed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—that “everyone has a right to education.”  So, even as the world’s population grew quickly, so did educational attainment, and people’s capacity to produce, build institutions, invent, and adapt.

At the same time, we have been living hard on the planet. In 1960 about 60 percent of the Earth’s surface was wilderness, and today it’s only 35 percent. The rate at which biodiversity is being lost due to human activity rivals the five mass extinctions in the Earth’s history.  Annual C02 emissions have quadrupled. Inequality has reached intolerable levels. And tragically, the number of armed conflicts has risen, many of which are driven by extreme ideologies or competition for resources.

Can education be the antidote to a world prone to fracture along environmental, social, and economic fault lines? Can education systems incorporate new insights into how children learn, cultivate scientific thinking, and become more inclusive of people pushed to the margins?

In considering these questions, it is important to note that investments in education have a delayed effect. Children entering school today will be fully functioning adults only 15-20 years from now. To shape the world of 2050, we need to act now.

Read the full article about achieving rapid development in education by Christopher J. Thomas at Brookings.