Making the future work with the student of today

The Perennial Paradox

I am a firm believer in equal opportunity (as opposed to equal outcome). And that to me often translates into the need for a great education. The cry of employers trying to find suitable employees is ironically rivalled only by the vacuity of the millions trapped in structural unemployment. There is a perennial paradoxical mismatch between the needs of employers and the skills of its labour force: People without jobs, and jobs without people. The questions arise: What skills should today’s youth be taught? What skills do employers seek out? Why is there such an apparent mismatch between the two? The answers, I would submit begin and end with education.

Currently, I am a Second Year undergraduate reading for a Bachelor of Laws. I have read and assimilated about the Future of Work and what it holds for us. I humbly submit my attempt to introspect upon the educational mechanisms we have in place to produce suitable people for employment. Have they changed? Do they need to change? And if so, what is the change needed?

With the expansion of automation across all disciplines, the framework of our labour market is changing. The need for tedious white collar jobs or data processing responsibilities is gradually diminishing as they can be easily replaced by the staggering improvements made in machine learning and AI. There comes the need for the focus of education itself to change in accordance with the needs of the market. And indeed, the change is underway.

Traditional classroom

Starting from the early 19th century onwards, the system of education that most of us are accustomed to involves learning in the ‘traditional classroom’ setting. This translates to lecture-based learning in which the teacher operates a top- down approach of information dissemination. The students are engaged primarily in passive learning required to take notes on what is being said, and ask questions if needed. Admittedly, in this structure of learning, what is kept constant is time. And the variable, how much each student learns within that fixed time period. Evidently, such a system of education is geared primarily toward knowledge retention. Up until the mid-20th century, this particular quality of merely possessing knowledge, was sufficient enough to compete, dare I say even succeed.

Flipped Classroom

Then came the 21st century and the concurrent explosion of the Internet. With the expansion of online institutions such as Khan Academy, MIT Open Course Ware and online MOOCS engineered by organisations such as Amnesty International, time no longer needs to be a fixed constraint in relation to the process of knowledge acquisition. As opposed to the traditional learning caricature, what can now be kept constant is how well a student has mastered a particular concept. And the variable, how long he or she takes to learn it. This structure of education creates the opportunity to place higher primacy on the idea of ‘mastery’ learning, as opposed to the time taken to learn that particular concept. As professed by Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, in the traditional classroom setting, most students “accumulate gaps in their learning as they progress” due to the lack of time, and eventually “hit a wall”. The notion of students being able to learn at their own pace, and having the opportunity to master a concept before moving on to the next, is groundbreaking in terms of reshaping the role of the physical classroom; and consequently, that of education itself.

In modern times, content is no longer confined to the walls of a classroom. Students can access the same content being taught in their physical classroom, online, with the added benefit of being able to internalise the material at their own pace. To the extent that a lecturer’s role is solely knowledge dissemination, that job can, and already is being accomplished by online academic institutions. However, modern academics view this not as an unhealthy collision of the online and physical worlds, but rather a chance to use the online developments in education, to enhance the role of the teacher and the physical classroom. In an interview done in collaboration with both Bill Gates and Sal Khan, they suggested that this online liberation of course material, allows for the creation of a more creative and innovative culture in the classroom. And by virtue, expands the role of the teacher as a whole. It gives the teacher both the opportunity and responsibility, to move away from the regular rigidity of a set curriculum: To foster more time in the class toward creative, tactile and hands-on learning activities and a real time assessment of students dealing with work: Collaboration with the online and physical words of education allow for what Sal Khan has coined the flipped classroom: Allowing the lecture to be done at a student’s own time and pace, and the homework (somewhat counterintuitively) to be done in class, with the presence of a teacher and fellow peers to guide the student along.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset and Learning to learn

This entire change in educational and teaching structure is arguably geared towards instilling in students what modern scientists have coined a growth mindset. It was both discovered and devised by Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, Carol Dweck. The myriad of scientific research has discovered the human brain to be just like a muscle: One which can grow, if exercised properly. Yes, an individual's own intelligence has the ability to expand. A growth mindset makes students aware of the latter, and encourages individuals to believe their abilities can be developed. A mindset which praises perseverance, struggles and mistakes over innate talent; which research has proven, does in fact lead to better neural- connections and allows the brain to actually grow. The focal point of education now becomes teaching students the ability to learn. Not just know.

In a world which incorporates an ever changing labour market, employers will constantly seek out new skills from its labour force. This makes the growth mindset, and the ongoing genesis of mastery learning more significant than ever before. It is no longer realistic for teachers, college professors and employers to try and prognosticate a fixed set of skills that they feel would be needed in tomorrow's job market. Times have changed. The skills needed to succeed in the market are indeed constantly changing. Employers themselves would not be able to predict what they would need from their own employees 10 years from now.

The goal of education is changing. The goal of teaching is no longer mere test scores. It is mastery: Fostering in students the skill of learning: Students who value the challenges, struggles, frustration and vulnerability that learning and fully mastering new material can bring: Students who revere the hard work needed in order to persevere through it all; and most of all, students who believe they can develop their own abilities: The student that will be equipped to adapt to the permeability of the ever changing job market: The student who knows and loves to learn. That is the student of today.