What
we believe in
The urgency of the SDGs
In 2015, in order to respond to the new global challenges, 193 countries adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the United Nations, pledging to eradicate poverty, protect the planet, and guarantee peace and prosperity for all by 2030. In order to “leave no one behind“, the 17 SDGs are closely interconnected.
No.4.7 dedicated to “Education for sustainable development and global citizenship“, is particularly cross-cutting and crucial: its achievement is a prerequisite for the other objectives.
The SDGs call for the involvement of all players: states, the international community, NGOs, local authorities, companies and citizens. The creation of the Learning Planet Institute responds to this global call to action.
We are firmly convinced indeed that youth, lifelong learning and collective intelligence are essential to face the complex current and future challenges of our planet.
To achieve our mission—to build learning, sustainable and inclusive societies—we lead, explore and share learning ecosystems that enable us to better adapt ourselves and respond to the needs of the youth and the planet.
Finally, we encourage learners to become lifelong “Learning Planetizens”, capable of taking care of themselves, the others and the planet.
Facing the challenges of today and tomorrow: co-creating a learning society
According to François Taddei, co-founder and president of the Learning Planet Institute, educational systems generally continue to value memorisation and calculation, whereas any machine can now perform these tasks more efficiently than human beings.
We are living through a major transition in our evolution: with the development of artificial intelligence and the discoveries in genetics, unprecedented challenges arise for the human species. How can we ensure that, in this rapidly changing world, education and research adapt quickly enough? What is the place of humans in a world full of machines? How can we use technology to develop our individual abilities and our collective intelligence?
In his book Learning in the 21st Century, François Taddei advocates a revolution of knowledge. He also looks at how we can learn collectively, cooperating with people, just as all living organisms have done since the origins of life. He explores the best ways to start asking ourselves new questions—if not the right ones, then at least some.
A society where we learn to take care of ourselves, the others and the planet
Together Tackling the Challenges of the 21st Century – Learning Planetizen Manifesto
As of 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed our lives and shaken our societies. It has dramatically increased inequalities and worsened the situation of the most vulnerable (the young, the elderly, women, the poor). It has made us aware of our interdependence with other human beings and of all the components of the biosphere.
François Taddei, co-founder and president of the Learning Planet Institute, invites us to take action, to do together what we could not do alone. He encourages us to learn how to take care of ourselves, the others and the planet. He suggests that we should rethink democracy, current debates, citizenship and education to make them more inclusive, more ecological, more suited to the challenges of the younger generations.
Drawing from existing initiatives and developments in collective intelligence and artificial intelligence, he offers a reconsideration of the sharing of knowledge and the exercise of citizenship, and he proposes that we invent, together, a desirable future.
What if we were the first generation of Learning Planetizens?
“(…) Citizens of imperial states competed to exploit nature and colonize other parts of the world to maximize their wealth. This engendered the slavery, war, and overexploitation of natural resources that ushered in our current age of democratic, economic, health, climate, and biodiversity crises, none of which stop at the walls of any city. If the citywide and statewide levels are the appropriate scales for coming to democratic decisions on local and national issues, then in order to solve borderless crises, a larger planetary scale is needed, thus in addition to being local citizens, we all need to learn to become ethical, inclusive, and respectful planetizens.
Planetizens of all ages are learning planetizens because we can always continue to learn to (i) care for themselves, others, and the planet, (ii) work together to overcome personal, local, and global challenges (including the UN’s SDGs) by mobilizing collective intelligence and technologies that can help us to become more sustainable, (iii) recognize our global interdependence, the limits of our planet, the vulnerability of our societies, and the complexity of our world, (iv) reflect on our past, present, and future, (v) be good ancestors to the generations to come, (vi) “planetize the movement,” in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as our thinking, actions, rights, institutions, celebrations, and ability to decide together how on Earth we’re going to live together.”
Learning Planetizen Manifesto – François Taddei, co-founder and president of the Learning Planet Institute
