Education the armour for children against future world of work
Increased automation will make unskilled labour redundant over time
In an attempt to make sense of the changes in the world of work, we have characterised ours as the age of the shopping mall, a time when a few tellers are hired to collect money from SA shoppers who buy things made in China or South Korea.
What, then, will our future economy look like? Will a time come when millions of uneducated black South Africans find work again?
Philosophers with a fertile imagination predicted in the 18th century that most work in the 21st century would be done by machines. They prophesied that the only thing left for mankind would be to eat, drink and have sex.
Last week this columnist attended this year’s Nampo Harvest Day at Bothaville in the Free State. The gigantic farming machines on display were indeed breathtaking.
One of them can till 100 hectares of land a day, and plant maize at the same time – controlled by one operator who sees all the details of the field on a computer screen.
In a day, such a machine does work that could take 100 people more than 20 days to complete. Quite clearly the technologist who designed this machine wanted work to be done quickly and efficiently, without the disturbance of unionised employees who threaten to strike.
In mining, machines are fast replacing human beings, just as robots are taking the place of workers in factories.
Even in traditional menial work such as cleaning, a man sits on top of a mobile machine that scrubs expansive floors with a gigantic brush. A single machine sprinkles detergents, wipes out stains and polishes the floor at the same time.
The technologist who invents these machines is regarded as a liberator who frees man from the bondage of hard labour, a producer of the key that opens the gate to the realm of the mind.
In his book The Conquest of Happiness, British philosopher Bertrand Russell envisaged a world in which people would work for four hours a day, and spend the rest of their time not eating, drinking or having sex, but engaged in the sublime activities of the mind.
Our modern technologist may have appeared in Russell’s dreams of the future as man’s liberator, but his inventiveness has consigned a multitude of unskilled black South Africans to poverty and joblessness.
Millions of uneducated black people don’t eat, drink or have sex while robots work. They are tormented by pangs of hunger, and their minds are atrophied by boredom. Their mental taste buds have not been sharpened to savour intellectual food.
Philosophers of yore saw happy souls in a future world of technology, but the bulk of humanity today is pauperised by man’s conversion into a redundant being.
But the point should not be to prevent the arrival of the future. No one can stop the forward march of technology. The sophisticated machines of our day are a harbinger of more automation to come. We must expect more and more rock drillers in the mines to be replaced by machines.
To avoid social catastrophe, we must ensure our children are exposed to the highest quality of education possible.
An ideal education must mould a child to become a professionally flexible adult who can hop from one career to another in a future world that will have less respect for rigid career boundaries.
The economy of the future will have fewer full-time workers. Other than CEOs, the best paid people will be technically sharp and cerebrally versatile professionals who prefer to work as consultants to being permanent employees.
Such a world is bound to be politically unstable if not powered by first-class education. We can avert social disaster by using public education to rescue the children of the poor. Those of the rich already go to privileged schools insulated from the destructive actions of teacher unions like Sadtu.
The poet James Shirley saw death as the leveller at the end of life. He was right to say “there is no armour against fate”. But we can and must use education as the leveller in life, the armour of children against fate.
Let the future come, ready to tell technology: “You shall not devour my soul!”