The future of work and the future of school are forever changing. After watching a Vice episode "The Future of Work" I started to reflect on what education will look like as all of these jobs are automated. It is no longer just the low skill level, repetitive jobs that are being automated out, but even higher level jobs like paralegals and even journalists. If all of these entry level jobs will be gone, what are we educating our students for?
We need to start looking at creating problem solvers, critical thinkers, leaders and people that can adapt to this changing world. School should be about so much more than the memorization of facts. As this world shifts we also need to shift education to meet the needs of the future workforce. More and more companies are looking at an applicants skill sets and not education level, including Google and Apple.
The big problem with the way that AI is impacting our economy right now is that the rich are getting richer and the lower class are not seeing any increase in wages. According the the show jobs right now are being created for smart people, educated people, and rich people or as was the mayor of Stockton, California said "How will those being left behind today not be left further behind tomorrow?" I think that this is where education can step in. We can help to foster innovators and critical thinkers to succeed in tomorrow's economy. Education can be seen at an equalizer, but we need to give the less privileged access to the same tools as the privileged (this may be hypocritical coming from somebody whose career has been spent in private education).
I would like to see education involve partnerships with local business to solve local problems. We need these students to create solutions and work with teams. I hope that we can get education to start to shift before it is too late. I am hoping that I can be a part of this change and I am working with my school to start to implement it. As an independent school though we can be the leaders to show what is possible and help all schools on Kauai. We can't be left behind and we can't leave others behind.
I'm glad you drove into this resource. I like particularly that challenges you to think about ways that school can develop growth for its own vision of what learning can be. I appreciate that you brought in a quote from within the resource itself. One area that I wonder you could've explored a little more is in what ways would the technologies we can use within schools support this change, or be used as a means to strengthen the programmatic work we do to create the situations you mentioned about 21st-century skills.
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