hat are the skills needed for the future? This is a question that permeates most conversations or reports about the future of work. There is a general consensus that teaching STEM subjects is not enough but that we should rather focus on STEAM. We even agree that training for technical skills should be complemented by acquiring human (or “soft”) skills. We pour over lists of jobs that are slowly declining and others that are emerging. And we all—in our different fields as educators or employers—scramble to identify and train for the skills that the next generation would need to thrive in the future.
All this assumes that we can predict the future, an assumption with scant evidence given our rather terrible track record. Even when scientists predicted the inevitability of a virus like COVID-19, we failed to predict its societal, economic, and even environmental impact. And worse yet, we failed to prepare for it.
Our hope is that we do not do the same with education, skills, and talent. Rather than trying to predict the jobs and the skills of the future, let us admit that we do not know and have no way of knowing what they will be. A well-circulated claim is that 65% of primary school-aged children will probably end up working in jobs that do not exist. A BBC investigation found that this number is closer to one-third. While this could be an interesting point of discussion, the number that we should be more interested in is that according to a survey conducted by CareerBuilder in 2018, 45% of HR managers say they are “unable to fill open positions because they cannot find qualified talent.” In 2018. This is the present—actually the past—not the future. And while some are still debating what 21st century skills should be, a fifth of that century has already passed.
This brings us to the fact that we are actually doing a pretty lousy job of preparing our youth today for the jobs of today. While we may not know how many jobs will disappear or what kind of jobs will be created in the future, we do know that the overwhelming percentage of jobs have already changed. Our world is and will continue to rapidly evolve, suffer from extreme turbulence, and continue to become more and more interconnected. It requires people (both old and young) to continually learn, unlearn, and relearn. And if we are to have any future, it requires them to do so while also acting for the global good.
So, rather than trying to guess which skills are needed for the future, let us focus on nurturing talent that can thrive in turbulence, in disruption, and in evolution. Let us train minds for complex systems that will always be bound by unsolvable constraints. Let us focus not on unidimensional teaching decision-making but ethical, sustainable decision-taking. Let us train for critical thinking that can discern fact from claim and can argue based on logic rather than assumptions. And let us get comfortable with looking at the world in shades of grey, rather than rigid ideologies.
We still hold discussions about the skills needed for the 21st century, as if this were forward-looking. With a fifth of the century already gone, we better start working urgently on building skills which impact society today.
a global affairs media network
Skills for the Present, Not the Future
Photo by Edwin Andrade via Unsplash.
October 15, 2020
W
hat are the skills needed for the future? This is a question that permeates most conversations or reports about the future of work. There is a general consensus that teaching STEM subjects is not enough but that we should rather focus on STEAM. We even agree that training for technical skills should be complemented by acquiring human (or “soft”) skills. We pour over lists of jobs that are slowly declining and others that are emerging. And we all—in our different fields as educators or employers—scramble to identify and train for the skills that the next generation would need to thrive in the future.
All this assumes that we can predict the future, an assumption with scant evidence given our rather terrible track record. Even when scientists predicted the inevitability of a virus like COVID-19, we failed to predict its societal, economic, and even environmental impact. And worse yet, we failed to prepare for it.
Our hope is that we do not do the same with education, skills, and talent. Rather than trying to predict the jobs and the skills of the future, let us admit that we do not know and have no way of knowing what they will be. A well-circulated claim is that 65% of primary school-aged children will probably end up working in jobs that do not exist. A BBC investigation found that this number is closer to one-third. While this could be an interesting point of discussion, the number that we should be more interested in is that according to a survey conducted by CareerBuilder in 2018, 45% of HR managers say they are “unable to fill open positions because they cannot find qualified talent.” In 2018. This is the present—actually the past—not the future. And while some are still debating what 21st century skills should be, a fifth of that century has already passed.
This brings us to the fact that we are actually doing a pretty lousy job of preparing our youth today for the jobs of today. While we may not know how many jobs will disappear or what kind of jobs will be created in the future, we do know that the overwhelming percentage of jobs have already changed. Our world is and will continue to rapidly evolve, suffer from extreme turbulence, and continue to become more and more interconnected. It requires people (both old and young) to continually learn, unlearn, and relearn. And if we are to have any future, it requires them to do so while also acting for the global good.
So, rather than trying to guess which skills are needed for the future, let us focus on nurturing talent that can thrive in turbulence, in disruption, and in evolution. Let us train minds for complex systems that will always be bound by unsolvable constraints. Let us focus not on unidimensional teaching decision-making but ethical, sustainable decision-taking. Let us train for critical thinking that can discern fact from claim and can argue based on logic rather than assumptions. And let us get comfortable with looking at the world in shades of grey, rather than rigid ideologies.
We still hold discussions about the skills needed for the 21st century, as if this were forward-looking. With a fifth of the century already gone, we better start working urgently on building skills which impact society today.
