Men are men, rather than doctors, engineers or architects.
Education should make them sensible and capable honest men,
and they will eventually become doctors, engineers and architects,
sensible and capable honest men.
Jhon Stewar Miller.
When we talk about the 21st century, ideas such as technology, the Internet, scientific rationality, the knowledge society, among others, and another reality associated with it, immediately come to mind is that they are changing at an unprecedented rate.
We can say that it is the century of knowledge. Knowledge changes the world, and our world is changing at the speed of new knowledge.
In the knowledge society, science and technology are conquering the different areas that comprise life. Transforming our way of thinking, feeling, and acting as fundamental aspects of the cognitive, the axiological, and the motor, essential dimensions of man.
In addition to this, we find that the knowledge society trades have an increasing technical content and the number of high-tech occupations is increasing. Every day the skills that society demands are more demanding, it is no longer enough to talk about a profession as an Engineer or Administrator, but skills that will change your profile will be required, to make it suitable for the competitive and demanding global world.
The commercial activity and the industries of the 21st century are more than dynamic, they are changing. The dynamic industries of the knowledge society are the intelligence industries: biotechnology, computer science, microelectronics, telecommunications, robotics, among others are the flagship activities of the new century. But it is also an inalienable fact that these industries depend on a new factor of production: it is called knowledge. In the knowledge society, added value no longer comes from the classic factors of production "land, capital and labor": it comes from technology before everything else. The 21st century professional must be familiar with this technology, since it is part of his knowledge, it is part of his life.
It is then when we find ourselves with more than a current of thought… we find a reality: the gap that exists between the professional of the 21st century and the school of today.
It is urgent that education rethink its objectives, its goals, its pedagogies and its didactics if it wants to fulfill its mission in the 21st century, and manage to train, not only the professional in any discipline, but the competitive professional and by the hand of the technological vanguard; provide satisfiers to the needs of man of this century. Hence, it is necessary to develop critical thinking and stimulate the scientific attitude from the first school and throughout their educational life.
Bill Gates says, in what the future brings: “The same technological forces that will make learning so necessary will make it enjoyable and practical. Corporations are reinventing themselves around the opportunities opened up by information technology, schools will also have to do it. ”
But it is also a fact, that the immense evolution of technologies and the high speed of change of our knowledge society, converges many times, in a reality that we cannot ignore: men with the only vision of surviving in a highly competitive world, technocrats, whose only vision is to develop and apply knowledge, rather than to transform and create, rather than to live and be.
So we can say that the ultimate goal of 21st century education must be the integral formation of the human being, understood as a being of needs, abilities and potentials. An education capable of intervening in the Cognitive Dimensions (knowledge) Axiological (values) and Motor (Skills and Skills). Rather than training an intellectual being, you must train a complete, holistic being. Education must mean transformative change.
Wise words from Gabriel García Márquez, who comments: «We believe that conditions are like never before for social change and that education will be its master organ. An education from the cradle to the grave, dissatisfied and reflective, that inspires us a new way of thinking, who we are in a society that loves itself. May the immense creative energy that for centuries we have squandered in predation and violence be channeled into life, and open for us the second chance on earth that did not have the unfortunate lineage of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. For the prosperous country that we dream within the reach of children ».
It must be recognized then, that it is a great challenge that we face: to diminish more and more the existing gap between the professional of the 21st century and the school of today. It is there where the teacher plays a significant role. The teacher to achieve transforming and complete beings, must be a transforming and complete being.
The educational work of the teacher of the 21st century, rather than providing a wealth of knowledge, must also include the conditions (didactic strategies) that enable the formation of the individual, prepared for life, so that they assume responsibilities and reach their fullness. It is here where we then find ourselves with the question of how the teacher of the 21st century should plan his strategy, its common thread, to achieve the expected result.
That is why we can affirm that educational planning and management have human dignity as their axis, since the vision of any educational process is ultimately to achieve the transformation and / or professionalization of the individual regardless of the discipline or stage of study.
Therefore, it is necessary to overcome and change the classic school structures supported by a rigid and vertical power, where planning is subordinated to the fulfillment of pre-established objectives. The value of man places him above everything else and makes the management of the school, even more so of the educational system and therefore the country's macro plan, include and revolve around the individual's complete personal development. A plan that includes not only the academic but the relationship and interaction with the important and dynamic technological changes. The consecration of this approach will result in significant progress to reduce the gap, and achieve the education we seek.
When we got here, we ran into an issue that should not go unnoticed: the impact of planning to achieve the expected result, that is, for the desired learning to take place, both from the point of view of the science knowledge that is dictated as from the capacities and abilities of an intellectual nature of the individual.
Planning the teaching process is the teacher's responsibility. But what should we plan? How to enhance that being, how to educate men and women for life. The combination of all these questions, focused on producing learning that empowers the human person in its highest capacities, is what makes the difference between a content transmitter teacher and a teacher that empowers human beings.
The teacher of the 21st century is then faced with a new concept of planning: strategic planning. Planning that goes beyond translating a class plan. The planning with a global vision, flexible, as to be remaking itself in the course, that allows even not to follow it, keeping its general lines.
This planning allows the teacher to have time to think about the practice, keeping in mind an outline where they can think about the elements that organize the activity, and sequence activities. It implies a progressive formative process.
Below is a scheme that compares the traditional or normative planning approach with that of strategic planning, this in order to glimpse where we want to go, that is, what the teacher of today who is training man should take into account in the morning.
| Regulatory Planning | Strategic planning |
| 1. Be nine exclusively on the plane of what must be | 1. It is practical and realistic |
| 2. It is technical and neutral, it does not explain social conditioning and its consequent political implementation. | 2. Articulate the technical aspects of education with the political, economic and social processes of the context |
| 3. Deterministic: it does not take into account uncertainty, it assumes that the behavior of the population and its institutions is neutral. | 3. It works with the participation of the "target population", taking into account their needs, characteristics and aspirations. |
| 4. Postulate the “planning-document” since the product of educational planning constitutes a publication that is hardly taken into account. | 4. Postulates the "planning process", since what is important is a systematic set of actions around the achievement of objectives and products, permanently adjustable |
| 5. It governs the phases of the planning process: diagnosis, identification of objectives, programming, implementation, execution and evaluation. | 5. Work with specific categories in planning: problems, operations, solutions; according to the needs and characteristics of the area in which it is planned. |
| 6. Planner divided from the social sphere in which he works, assuming a technocratic attitude | 6. Integrated planner within the social sphere in which he works, assuming leadership and social promotion attitudes. |
| 7. Closed system that follows laws and procedures | 7. Open system that follows and creates laws and procedures. |
| 8. Centralized, hierarchical and vertical structure | 8. Decentralized, horizontal and integrated structure |
| 9. Bureaucratic, can only deal with problems considered within a legal or
regulatory procedure. |
9. Dynamics, visualize theories and procedures for changes of a social, economic, legal and structural nature; so that the planning process is permanently fed back and updated. |
| 10. Rigidity in the allocation of time for the application of different phases of the planning process, which compromises the quality of the objectives. | 10. It is based on the efficiency and effectiveness of the planning process to achieve quality objectives, being able to prudently readjust the foreseen terms. |
| 11. Eminently quantitative information. | 11. Balanced information based on the collection and processing of quantitative and qualitative data that are mutually supportive. |
| 12. Decisions are made for the future | 12. Decisions are made to modify the present based on the future |
| 13. We work with assumptions based on certainty. | 13. We work with assumptions based on uncertainty. |
| 14. The environment in which you plan prioritizes aspects of the internal environment that is relatively stable, with little probability of change. | 14. The environment in which it is planned addresses aspects of the internal environment, which is changing and is impacted by its frames of reference |
(Source: Strategic Planning; Arguin G., University of Québec, Canada, 1985)
More than following a certain scheme, the teacher of the 21st century must be a professional with a high humanistic, didactic and technological content, capable of promoting a change in the pedagogical vision by forming a community of critical educators, researchers and self-sufferers who As agents of social change, they can be efficient mediators of learning and promote their students' intellectual and moral autonomy.
