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Future
Nalu, Child of the Future
My name’s Nalu, I’m 14, and it’s the year 2050. My parents still call my childhood the New Era, but to me it’s just normal. The world has changed loads. Crises, wars, AI, chaos – everything hit at once. At some point, people finally got it: education is the most important thing there is. Nothing works without it. My parents met on a language course at the Adult Education Centre in Ulm. They’d fled – everything was new, nothing was certain. For them, learning the language meant being allowed to stay, starting again, having a future. When I think about it, it feels totally unreal, because Ulm is just home to me. The Adult Education Centre still exists. Now it’s part of the EduHub, where I learn too. It’s not really a school, even if people call it that. I like that it’s a space where anything’s possible – for everyone. There’s always something happening here, and my friends are here. It’s a super modern place to learn. It cost so much that loads of people in Ulm were properly scared to even build it in the first place. I’m here almost every day, and every time I think: mad how much you can learn here. Everything’s bright, open, and feels like the future. At the EduHub, we don’t just learn maths or tech. We learn how to shape the future, how to get along with each other, how peace can actually work – and how to save democracy, because for a while it was seriously on the brink of collapse. There’s even a School of Democracy. This is our place. You get it pretty quick — knowledge is what matters most.
Manifesto of Symphatesis Theses for the year 2050 – a thought experiment
We believe in learning as a relationship. Knowledge does not belong to anyone; it is something that is built together. When we really see each other, listen, and are open to change, understanding grows. And without understanding, there is no peace. We understand empathy as a collective competence. It is not a private virtue, but a social infrastructure. Symphatesis cultivates compassion as a conscious, trainable, and responsible practice—far from naïveté, close to justice. The ability to deal with conflict is a core competence of social education. Peace is not about harmony — it is about finding agreements that last. Tensions are not avoided, but shaped. Conflict thus becomes the raw material of the future. We design education as a space for peace. Learning environments are social laboratories for living together. Symphatesis creates spaces where vulnerability is protected and diversity is experienced as collective intelligence. Every educational institution is responsible for the peace it fosters. The future emerges from connectedness. The autonomous individual steps back for the sake of others, the environment, and future generations. The future is not predicted—it is shaped together.
Technology serves the common good. It strengthens participation, not control. The Earth learns with us. Education takes place in responsibility for all living things. Generations learn together. Peace is something we practice. We learn it every day, in small acts.
