The Images of 21 st Century

The Images of 21 st Century
The 21st (twenty-first) century is the current century in the Anno Domini era or Common Era, under the Gregorian calendar. It began on January 1, 2001 (MMI) and will end on December 31, 2100 (MMC).[1]
Marking the beginning of the 21st century was the rise of a global economy and Third World consumerism, deepening global concern over terrorism after September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and increased private enterprise.[2][3][4] The NATO interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq of the early 2000s and overthrowing several regimes during the Arab Spring of the early 2010s led to mixed outcomes in the Arab world, resulting in several civil wars and political instability.[5] The United States has remained the global superpower, while China is now considered an emerging global superpower.
In 2017, 49.3% of the world's population lived in "some form of democracy", though only 4.5% lived in "full democracies".[6]
The European Union was greatly expanded in the 21st century, adding 13 member states, but the United Kingdom withdrew. Most European Union member states introduced a common currency, the Euro.
Effects of global warming and rising sea levels exacerbated the ecological crises, with eight islands disappearing between 2007 and 2014.[7][8][9]
Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began to rapidly spread worldwide, killing 5 million people around the globe and causing severe global economic disruption, including the largest global recession since the Great Depression.
With the proliferation of mobile devices, more than half of the world's population obtained access to the internet (2018 estimate).[10] After the success of the Human Genome Project, DNA sequencing services became available and affordable.
There is a lack of general agreement over how to pronounce specific years of the 21st century in English. Academics have pointed out that the early years of previous centuries were commonly pronounced as, for example, "eighteen oh five" (for 1805) and "nineteen oh five" (for 1905).[13] Generally, the early years of the 21st century were pronounced as in "two-thousand (and) five", with a change taking place around 2010, when pronunciations often shifted between the early-years form of "two-thousand and ten" and the traditionally more concise form of "twenty-ten".
The Vancouver Olympics, which took place in 2010, was being officially referred to by Vancouver 2010 as "the twenty-ten Olympics".
Advances in technology such as ultrasound, prenatal genetic testing and genetic engineering are changing the demographics and has the potential to change the genetic makeup of the human population. Because of sex selective abortion, fewer girls have been born in the 21st century (and since the early 1980s) compared to past centuries, mostly because of son preference in East and South Asia. In 2014, only 47 percent of Indian births were of girls.[14] This has led to an increase in bachelors in countries such as China and India. The first genetically modified children were born in November 2018 in China, beginning a new biological era for the human species and raising great controversy.
Anxiety[15] and depression[16] rates have risen in the United States and many other parts of the world. However, suicide rates have fallen in Europe and most of the rest of the world so far this century, declining 29% globally between 2000 and 2018, despite rising 18% in the United States in the same period. The decline in suicide has been most notable among Chinese and Indian women, the elderly, and middle-aged Russian men.
The entire written works of humanity, from the beginning of recorded history to 2003, in all known languages, are estimated to be at five exabytes of data.[19][20] Since 2003, with the beginning of social media and "user-generated content", the same amount of data is created every two days.[21] The growth of human knowledge and information continues at an exponential rate.
Telecommunications in the early 21st century are much more advanced and universal than they were in the late 20th century. Only a few percent of the world's population were Internet users and cellular phone owners in the late 1990s; as of 2018, 55% of the world's population is online, and as of 2019, an estimated 67% own a cell phone.[22] In the 2010s, artificial intelligence, mainly in the form of deep learning and machine learning, became more prevalent and is prominently used in Gmail and Google's search engine, in banking, with the military and other niches. In 2017, 14% of the world's population still lacked access to electricity.[23]

India's Prayag Kumbh Mela is regarded as the world's largest religious festival.
In 2001, Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, beginning the era of commercial spaceflight. Entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Richard Branson are working towards commercial space exploration, colonization and tourism, while China and India have made substantial strides in their space programs. On January 3, 2019, China landed a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, the first to do so
War and violence have declined considerably compared to the 20th century, continuing the post-World War II trend called Long Peace. Malnourishment and poverty are still widespread globally, but fewer people live in the most extreme forms of poverty. In 1990, approximately one-in-four people were malnourished, and nearly 36% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty; by 2015, these numbers had dropped to approximately one-in-eight and 10%, respectively.
The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal drew international attention to the possible adverse effects of social media in influencing citizen's views, particularly regarding the 2016 United States presidential election.
The world population was about 6.1 billion at the start of the 21st century and reached 7.8 billion by March 2020. It is estimated to reach nearly 8.6 billion by 2030,[25] and 9.8 billion by 2050. According to the United Nations World Urbanization prospects, a 60% projection of the world's human population is to live in megacities and megalopolises by 2030, 70% by 2050, and 90% by 2080. It is expected by 2040, the investing of more than 5 times the current global gross domestic product is expected to be in urban infrastructure.[26]
Life expectancy has increased as child mortality continues to decline. A baby born in 2016, for example, will, on average (globally), live to 72 years—26 years longer than the global average of someone born in 1950. Ten million Britons (16% of the United Kingdom population) will, on average, live to 100 or older.[27]
Climate change remains a serious concern; UN Chief António Guterres, for instance, has described it as an "existential threat" to humanity.[28] Furthermore, the Holocene extinction event, the sixth most significant extinction event in the Earth's history, continues with the widespread degradation of highly biodiverse habitats as a by-product of human activity
Economically and politically, the United States and Western Europe were dominant at the beginning of the century; by the 2010s, China became an emerging global superpower and, by some measures, the world's largest economy. In terms of purchasing power parity, India's economy became more significant than Japan's around 2011.[30]
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are decentralized currencies that are not controlled by any central bank. These currencies are increasing in popularity worldwide due to the expanding availability of the internet and are mainly used as a store of value.
There is an ongoing impact of technological unemployment due to automation and computerization: the rate at which jobs are disappearing—due to machines replacing them—is expected to escalate.[31] Automation alters the number of jobs and the skills demands of industries. As of 2019, the production output of first world nations' manufacturing sectors was doubled when compared to 1984 output; but it is now produced with one-third fewer workers and at significantly reduced operating costs.[32] Half of all jobs with requirements lower than a bachelor's degree are currently in the process of being replaced with partial- or full-automation.[33]
The World Economic Forum forecast that 65% of children entering primary school will end up in jobs or careers that currently do not yet exist.[34]
A rise in the retirement age has been called for in view of an increase in life expectancy and has been put in place in many jurisdictions.[
As of 2009, SIL Ethnologue catalogued 6,909 living human languages.[37] The exact number of known living languages will vary from 5,000 to 10,000, generally depending on the precision of one's definition of "language", and in particular, on how one classifies dialects.
Estimates vary depending on many factors, but the general consensus is that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages currently spoken. Between 50 and 90% of those will have become extinct by the year 2100.[38]
The top 20 languages spoken by more than 50 million speakers each, are spoken by 50% of the world's population. In contrast, many of the other languages are spoken by small communities, most of them with fewer than 10,000 speakers.[
1998–2003 – The Second Congo War continued into the early 21st century. A 1999 ceasefire quickly broke down and a UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC, was unable to control the fighting. Troops from Rwanda and Uganda continued to support rebel groups against the Democratic Republic of the Congo and rifts also grew between Rwanda and Uganda as they accused each other of supporting rival rebel groups as well. Laurent Kabila, president of the DRC, was assassinated in January 2001 and his son, Joseph Kabila, took power. Throughout 2002 steps were made towards peace and Rwanda and Uganda both removed their troops from the country. On December 17, 2002, a massive treaty officially ended the war. However, the DRC only holds power in less than half of the country, with most of the eastern and northern portions still controlled by rebel groups, where there is still significant infighting. In addition, Rwanda still supports anti-DRC rebels and anti-Rwandan rebels continue to operate from the DRC. The war killed an estimated 3.9 million people, displaced nearly 5.5 million, and led to a widespread and ongoing famine that continues to result in deaths. Severe human rights violations continue to be reported.
20 January: George W. Bush is inaugurated as the 43rd president of the United States. He is the second president from the Bush family.
1 April: The Netherlands becomes the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.
13 May: The conservative media magnate Silvio Berlusconi wins the general election in Italy, becoming country's Prime Minister. Berlusconi would dominate Italian political life for all the decade.
1 June: The Nepalese royal massacre occurs at a house on the grounds of the Narayanhity Royal Palace, the residence of the Nepalese monarchy. Ten members of the family were killed during a party or monthly reunion dinner of the royal family in the house. The dead included King Birendra of Nepal and Queen Aishwarya.
20–22 July: More than 200,000 anti-globalization protesters marched in Genoa, during the 27th G8 summit. Two demonstrators were killed by the Italian police. On July 21 a group of Carabinieri attacked the school Armando Diaz, seriously injuring many peaceful protesters. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi insisted that police used the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve their goals.
11 September: September 11 attacks – Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijack four commercial airliners and crash two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and one into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania of the United States on September 11, killing nearly 3,000 people. The president George W. Bush subsequently declares the War on Terror.
11 December: After 15 years of negotiations, the People's Republic of China becomes a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
2001–2014 – The Northern Alliance and NATO-led ISAF invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, and overthrew the Al-Qaeda-supportive Taliban government. Troops remained to install a democratic government, fight a slowly escalating insurgency, and to hunt for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden who was killed by American troops nearly 10 years later, on May 2, 2011. On December 24, 2014, NATO forces officially ended combat operations in Afghanistan; but forces still remain to the present.
2002
20 May: After a long period of occupation by Indonesia, East Timor's independence is recognized by Portugal and by the UN.
1 July: The International Criminal Court (ICC) is established.
10 September: Switzerland, a neutral country, becomes a member of the United Nations.
12 October: Jemaah Islamiyah, a violent Islamist group, claimed responsibility for the detonation of three bombs in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The attack killed 202 people and 209 people were injured.
15 November: Hu Jintao becomes the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, making him the paramount leader of China after Jiang Zemin.
2003–present – In February 2003, a conflict in Darfur, Sudan, began and soon escalated into full-scale war. By 2008 it was believed that up to 400,000 people had been killed and over 2.5 million displaced. In 2005, the ICC decided that Darfur war criminals would be tried, and on July 14, 2008, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir was charged with 5 accounts of crimes against humanity and 2 accounts of war crimes, although the ICC has no power to enforce these charges.
2003–2010 – The U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, and overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein (who was executed by the Iraqi government on December 30, 2006). Coalition troops remain in the country to install a democratic government and fight an escalating insurgency. In addition to an insurgency against the American presence, Iraq also suffered from a civil war for several years. The war was soon seen as the central front of the War on Terror by many governments, despite growing international dissatisfaction with the war. The total death toll has been estimated at near 150,000 but these estimations are highly disputed, with one highly disputed study guessing even over 1 million.[40] After the U.S.-led coalition initiated a troop surge in 2007, casualty numbers have decreased significantly. Combat ended, at least officially, in August 2010.
2003–2005 – A series of nonviolent revolutions known as the colour revolutions overthrew governments in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Lebanon.
2003
December: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi announced that Libya would voluntarily eliminate all weapons of mass destruction.
2004
11 March: Ten explosions occur at the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people and injuring around 2,000.
1 May: The European Union expanded by 10 countries (8 former communist countries, plus Malta and Cyprus).
1 September: A group of Chechen rebels invades a school in Beslan, keeping thousands of hostages during three days. A series of shootings and bombings kills 334 people and injured 750.
11 November: Palestinian leader and Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat dies in France, at the age of 75, from hemorrhagic stroke.
18 November: Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.
2005
7 July: Four Islamic extremist suicide bombers set off three bombs in London; 56 people were killed, including the four suicide bombers.
19 November: After the death of Pope John Paul II in April, Joseph Ratzinger of Germany is elected as Pope Benedict XVI.
22 November: Angela Merkel becomes the first female elected Chancellor of Germany.
2006–2008 – The dismantling of former Yugoslavia continued after Montenegro gained independence on June 3, 2006, and Kosovo declared independence on February 17, 2008. However, Kosovo's independence was disputed by Russia and many of its allies and was only partially recognized.
2006
12 July: Hezbollah crosses the border of Lebanon and captures two Israeli soldiers. Israel responds by sending troops across the border and bombing Hezbollah strongholds, while Hezbollah fires missiles on towns in northern Israel, approximately 6 each day. At the end of the war 1,200 Lebanese civilians, 500 Hezbollah fighteres, 44 Israeli civilians and 121 Israeli soldiers die. A ceasefire is signed on August 14, after which Israeli troops withdrew from Lebanon.
9 October: North Korea conducted its first nuclear test on October 9.[41] This was preceded by years of political wrangling with the U.S. over the status of their nuclear program.
2007–2008 – Nepal's centuries-old monarchy is overthrown, and the country becomes a republic.
2007
1 January: Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union.
25 January: A civil war escalated in the Gaza Strip throughout June, which resulted in Hamas eventually driving most Fatah-loyal forces from the Strip. In reaction, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and dissolved the Hamas-ruled parliament. Scattered conflict continues.
25 July: Pratibha Patil becomes the first woman to be elected President of India.
13 December: 27 EU member states signed the Treaty of Lisbon, and entered into force on 1 December 2009.
2007–2008 – Crisis follows the Kenyan presidential election of 2007, leading to the formation of a coalition government, with Mwai Kibaki as president and Raila Odinga as prime minister.
2008
17 February: Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. Serbia refuses to recognize it and considers Kosovo as part of its territory.
1 April: Some cadres of Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) attacked Senior leader of Nepali Congress, Bal Chandra Poudel, during an electoral period in Rasuwa, Nepal.
1–12 August: An armed conflict is fought between Georgia on one side, and the Russian Federation together with Ossetians and Abkhazians on the other. Russia officially recognized independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
4 November: Barack Obama is elected as the first African-American president of the United States. He is sworn into office in January 2009. He is awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which cited "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," and accepted the award the following year with "deep gratitude and great humility".
In the preface to the 2011 revised edition of his book ‘Out of Our Minds’, Sir Ken Robinson observes that ‘The more complex the world becomes, the more creative we need to be to meet its challenges’, and this is becoming increasingly clear in education and the workplace. People now need to be creative to be successful, but while the idea of success has changed, the education system has not always adjusted its methods or goals to meet it.
A 20th century education emphasised compliance and conformity over creativity, two skills that were necessary to do well in a professional or corporate environment and to hold down a good job for decades. Compliance and conformity are now a relic, but they are still key values in many schools, informing policy even when not being expressly promoted to students.
In his book ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?’, educational thought leader Yong Zhao warns, “National standards and national curriculum, enforced by high-stakes testing, can at best teach students what is prescribed… As a result, students talented in other areas never have the opportunity to discover those talents. Students with broader interests are discouraged, not rewarded. The system results in a population with similar skills in a narrow spectrum of talents. But especially in today’s society, innovation and creativity are needed in many areas, some as yet undiscovered.”
Unfortunately, most students continue to be educated in the same way as they were in the past, being taught a standardised curriculum through rote learning and individualised testing, at a one-size-fits-all pace. Far too many students are struggling to learn because they are disengaged and lack motivation. Why go to school when you could learn the same information faster by watching a Youtube video or playing a computer game? Why memorise facts for a test when you have all the information in the palm of your hand anyway? Past methods make little sense to today’s students who learn and think differently, and they make little sense in relation to the changing workplace, where making use of information is now far more valuable than simply knowing things. Schools are failing to teach students to respond to rapid change and how to handle new information because they are clinging to obsolete methods.
Growing up with this level of technology means growing up with a completely unprecedented amount of information at your fingertips. There are kids who have never been more than a few seconds away from the answers to their questions, with everything just a quick search away. They are able to teach themselves about any topic they are interested in without even leaving their bedroom.The current cohort of students come from Generation Z and Generation Alpha. These two generations have grown up with advanced technology as a given in their homes and classrooms. They are digital natives, as comfortable using apps and code as their grandparents were flipping pages.
Generations Z and Alpha are also the most internationally connected in history. They encounter people online from all over the world, and can easily make friends on the other side of the planet before they have even left their home state. Schools and parents are also increasingly offering children and young people the opportunity to travel, creating a truly borderless experience of learning.
The students in our schools today are intelligent, independent and extremely capable. They are skilled with technology and comfortable with global and intercultural communication. We can expect that future generations are going to have even more experience in these areas.
A 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION
A 21st century education is about giving students the skills they need to succeed in this new world, and helping them grow the confidence to practice those skills. With so much information readily available to them, 21st century skills focus more on making sense of that information, sharing and using it in smart ways.
The coalition P21 (Partnership for 21st Century Learning) has identified four ‘Skills for Today’:
Creativity
Critical thinking
Communication
Collaboration
These four themes are not to be understood as units or even subjects, but as themes that should be overlaid across all curriculum mapping and strategic planning. They should be part of every lesson in the same way as literacy and numeracy.
Creativity is about thinking through information in new ways, making new connections and coming up with innovative solutions to problems. Critical thinking is about analysing information and critiquing claims. Communication is understanding things well enough to share them clearly with other people. Collaboration is about teamwork and the collective genius of a group that is more than the sum of its parts.
There are other skills that are important, which fall within these four areas. Entrepreneurship can be considered a skill of its own. Inquiry and problem solving are key. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is one of the most important keys to successful work and relationships. The bottom line? Education needs to be all about empowering students with transferable skills that will hold up to a rapidly changing world, not prescribed content that has been chosen for its past relevance.
While digital integration is also fundamental to a thorough 21st century education, it is not enough to simply add technology to existing teaching methods. Technology must be used strategically to benefit students. Students are increasingly advanced users of technology even as they enter school for the first time, so this can often mean being open to the possibilities presented rather than attempting to teach and prescribe the use of certain programs. Many a classroom ‘technology class’ has baffled children by attempting to teach them about programs, websites and hardware that are no longer relevant or that they understand far better than the teacher does.
INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
21st century schools are also responding to demand by moving into international education. ISC Research have tracked these changes in their research. In the past, international schools were primarily for the families of military personnel and diplomats. In the year 2000 there were 2,500 international schools globally with fewer than one million students attending, but in December 2016 there were over 8,600 international schools with almost 4.5 million students. The vast majority of these students are now local children hoping to attend university in the West. Schools which aren’t traditional ‘international schools’ are also striving to create an internationally connected education through travel opportunities, exchange programs, school partnerships, international school leadership, and online communication. Learning to be a global citizen is crucial in a world where technology is erasing borders, and you don’t necessarily need an international education masters degree to incorporate this into your teaching.
21st century teachers need to serve as a guide or mentor for their students, not as the all-knowing sage providing them with all their information. With so much access to resources of all kinds, children are invariably going to know more than teachers on different topics, and be a step ahead of the technology in use. Teachers need to be empowered as facilitators and motivators for learning, so that they can empower their students in turn.
This shift is great news for teachers. Instead of struggling to give kids all the information they need to succeed in areas the teacher knows little about, they can support students as they make their own steps into different fields. It’s about preparing kids to go beyond their parents and teachers, making sure they have the skills to do it, and then helping along the way as they build confidence to achieve.
This means teachers need to be forward-thinking, curious and flexible. Teachers must be learners: learning new ways of teaching, and learning alongside their students. Simply asking questions like “what will my students need twenty or fifty years from now? How can I help give them those skills?” can change your mindset, make you a leader, and help you bring about change in your classroom, school and community.
21st century learning can be defined as student-centered learning. We refer to it this way because 21st century innovations make student-centered learning possible on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, these advances create new demands that make student-centered approaches increasingly necessary.
Twenty-first century advances such as automation, big data, and artificial intelligence are decreasing the need for people to do routine tasks. The vast amount of immediately-available information diminishes the need for a person to be an organization's knowledge keeper. While employers need fewer people to perform repeatable cognitive and manual tasks, they are looking for people to take on challenges that are increasingly complex and new. By one popular estimate, 65% of children who are currently entering primary school will eventually work in a job that does not exist today.
The same technologies that reduce the need for routine tasks and knowledge keeping also allow us to educate our students as we have never been able to before. Anyone with a computer or smartphone can instantly access, copy, transfer, edit and consume massive amounts of information. Great works and ideas that once were cloistered away in Ivy League libraries are now immediately available with a voice command or a touch. New software and applications now make it possible for all students to receive educational experiences that are tailored to their individual needs. Educators can keep students moving forward with online teaching tools that immediately show each student's strengths, needs, opportunities, and level of participation. Just as the development of the printing press made possible the age of mass instruction, the advent of new technologies makes possible the age of mass customization.