This paper first surveys the momentous societal changes currently taking place worldwide. This new societal context has placed education at a crossroads, offering unprecedented opportunities and threats, but in any case, it means that momentous decisions regarding education will have to be made. In contemplating the changes in society and deciding on the responses in the education sector, Comparative and International Education as a field of scholarship is uniquely placed to guide society to make informed decisions by the very nature of its object of study and the purposes it pursues. However, to live up to its full potential, several changes in the field are imperative. These include developing a forward or future-looking orientation in the field, giving due attention to education systems per se as well as to the societal outcomes of education, moving away from the fixation on matters about theory and paradigms, and at the same time developing autochthonous theory, and dismantling Northern hegemony and let the Global South comes to its right. [For the complete Volume 23 proceedings, see ED678047.]