Developing students for a brave new world

(1)- 65% of the jobs that our current students will do don’t yet exist.

(2)- The average student leaving school this year might have as many as 40 different jobs in 10 totally different career paths.

(3)- 85% of jobs are now filled via networking using sites such as LinkedIn rather than traditional job advertisements.

(4)- Given today’s rate of technological progress, we will experience approximately 20,000 years of progress in the 21st century.

In short, our students are heading towards a job market that has already changed with virtually no adequate preparation for it.

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink makes the case that it is the skills and aptitudes associated with the right brain that will prove to be increasingly important in the future job market.

(5) He traces the development of jobs and education through three distinct eras:

The Industrial Age: built on the manual labour of the workforce. People were paid to fulfil fairly menial tasks on assembly lines and in mines. These jobs have disappeared as technology and automation have increased or they are lower paid jobs.

The Information Age: in which people were paid for their knowledge and expertise. White-collar workers became the backbone of the economy as workers traded on their learning and know-how. These jobs require classic left-brained thinking: logic, analysis, function, systems, strategy, communications. Our education system prepared young people well for this, schooling them in mathematics, science, analysis, deduction and assessing them on their ability to exercise left-brained skills: knowledge, memorising, recall, writing, comparing, contrasting, equations and functions.

This age has now passed!

In a digital, AI age we no longer need people to fulfil these tasks. Computers and machines can do them faster and cheaper.

The Conceptual Age: in which people are paid for their ideas and innovation. Today, the volume of jobs and careers in design, creative arts, innovation and entrepreneurship are increasing – and being invented – by the day. These are right-brained jobs which utilise the creativity, art, lateral thinking, innovation and people skills. Critically, this is a workforce that will have to adapt, change and rethink on a regular basis because the pace of technological change and adaptation is so rapid.

People will be paid for the EQ rather than their IQ. Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) cites a study in which engineers were rated as to their relative success. This was then correlated with their IQ as well as their EQ. The study showed that there was zero correlation between their success and their IQ, whereas EQ correlated very highly (6). In fact, the percentage of career success that can be traced back to IQ is between just 4–10%. That’s all! IQ may open up certain career paths, but progression within any career is largely down to imagination, joyfulness and social dexterity, along with effort and practice. (7)

The truth is exceptionally little time, thought or investment being made in schools to address the changing job market and prepare young people for working life. Prioritising life skills and character development is essential: resilience, adaptability, social skills, teamwork, problem-solving, speaking skills, empathy, awareness, decision-making, self-belief, self-respect, self-discipline, aspiration, respect for human rights and the values of compassion, generosity, equality and inclusivism. This type of education cannot be peripheral; it cannot be a bolt-on. These skills are core if we want our students to survive in the future.

And what about entrepreneurship? The number of new businesses registered each year is at a record high (8). This figure has been rising year on year, and yet the average student will leave school after 14 years of compulsory education without one single hour of input on how to start a business.

So what to do… especially given the confines of an exam system and national curriculum that place external pressures upon schools?

First, we need to get serious about our task as educators: it isn’t to serve an examination system that perpetuates the status quo; our task is to prepare young people to live outstanding lives of purpose and to equip them to find and make their best contribution to the world. Get that right and the rest will follow.

Measure everything you do against that objective.

Second, decide which skills and aptitudes are essential for our students to thrive and then devise mechanisms and content to assess and develop those skills. This is entirely possible whilst still teaching the curriculum as it is. It’s about measuring progress in a range of skills more broadly, deliberately and robustly.

Third, create as many opportunities as you can for students to become comfortable with change: experiences, trips, work, team activities, outdoor education, arts and culture. Darwin said, ‘it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself’. (9) Not the strongest, not the smartest – the ones most adaptable to change. We have known this for a long time. We owe it to our students to act on it.

(1) World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs (2016), ch.1. Available at: https://reports.weforum.org/future-of-jobs-2016/chapter-1-the-future-of-jobs-and-skills

(2) P. Harris, How Many Jobs Should You Expect to Hold In Your Lifetime?, Workopolis (8 October 2015). Available at: https://careers.workopolis.com/advice/how-many-jobs-should-you-expect-to-hold-in-your-lifetime

(3) L. Adler, New Survey Reveals 85% of All Jobs are Filled Via Networking, LinkedIn, (2016). Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-survey-reveals-85-all-jobs-filled-via-networking-lou-adler

(4) D. Butler, Tomorrow's World, Nature, 530 (2016): 399-401. Available at: https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.19431!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/530398a.pdf?origin=ppub

(5) Pink, A Whole New Mind, pp. 48-49.

(6) D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence At Work: Why IQ Isn't Everything [video] (2018). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngIFlmRRPQ

(7) Pink, A Whole New Mind, p. 58.

(8) M. O'Dwyer, London Drives Increase in Number of New UK Startups, City AM (14 January 2019). Available at: https://www.cityam.com/london-drives-increase-number-new-uk-startups

(9) Leon Megginson allegedly summarising Darwin’s Origin of Species: L. C. Megginson, Lessons from Europe for American Business, Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, 44(1) (1963): 3–13 at Crown House.