Man vs. Machine, Round 2
We’ve lost chess, but it’s not too late to equip our kids to win in the future
I’m a strategist. As management consultant and investor I’m used to analysing corporations with one question in mind — What is the 3-5 year winning strategy?
Michael, my 1.5 year old son is a strategic question on a whole different scale. He will hit formal education in 4 years, and the job market in 20, where he’ll need a winning strategy for at least 30 years of active participation. I believe education is the most important aspect of securing a happy and productive life for him. To do so, in our ever more technological world, he’ll need to master new types of literacy, thinking, and creation.
Traditionally, literacy meant teaching kids how to read and write. After all, 50 years ago knowledge was easy to find — you just went to the library and read. Libraries, and knowledge hierarchy is a thing of the past: ubiquitous access to information makes bloggers as relevant as luminaries, information comes from everywhere in its overwhelming quantity. Similarly, handwriting has become obsolete — If you’re anything like me, handwriting probably means signing documents and scrabbling notes, while important communication is done with emails, slides, short videos. Yet, we don’t systematically teach these methods of expression.
The way we teach literacy needs to change. Reading needs to become an active process where the reader hunts for information, and then critically reads, triangulates, and creates understanding. We need to teach our kids how to be critical readers from an early age. It’s about retrieval and creation of knowledge, less about remembering. Similarly, writing should be thought of as a communication process focusing on content and form. Multimedia is the keyword here — because most chances are that our kids will look at handwriting the same way we view calligraphy.
Also, literacy should have a third leg — the ability to read and write code. A lot has been said about this recently, and there are many great products out there that teach kids (e.g. Primo, Robot Turtle), and adults (e.g. CodeCademy) how to code. My son’s career will greatly benefit from an ability to go under the hood of machines, as these will be integrated in virtually any line of work. Just like the Gutenberg Press made knowing how to read a necessity, the microprocessor makes knowing how to code a vital part of literacy.
Beyond literacy, we need to teach kids flexible thought. My generation is expected to change 15-20 jobs during our careers, and if our kids are anything like us, they will be even more mobile. Additionally, it is increasingly understood that innovation comes from cross-discipline thinking. What does this mean? First and foremost, we need to focus on teaching kids how to learn, giving them flexibility to stay competitive over time. Second, we need to focus on teaching disciplines (e.g. Math, Sciences, and Humanities) and not specifics (e.g. Law), because chances are, learning gleaned in school will already be obsolete by the time they need it. Third, we need to teach broadly — focusing on key concepts in many disciplines to enable flexibility and creativity.
Finally, I believe that the best jobs of the future will go to Creators. In a world that is less hierarchical, more fluid, and less protected from market forces than it has ever been, it will be the people who create businesses, technology, and art that will be successful. For that, they need to learn about economics, business, sales, how to work without supervision, collaborate, initiate, deal with uncertainty, and be creative. Being Creators will be important across all levels of employment — in a world that is flat and fluid, everyone will be his own business.
25 years ago, I’d want my son to be a lawyer, or a doctor, not a software engineer. Today, software engineering is among the most promising professions. In 25 years, other professions, that may not even exist today, could be the most promising.
As machines evolve our definition of what differentiates us as humans changes. As Brian Christian notes in “The Most Human Human”, machines increasingly overtake basic tasks (e.g. manufacturing), leaving more “Human” professions to humans. Being “Human” is hard to define, but until we do, we will be left to speculate about the right emphasise for education. Yet educating humans is what education should be about, and it is that that will create the strongest strategy for long term success.
Whatever the future brings, children who are properly literate, flexible thinkers and have a creator mindset will be better off. It’s an investment worth making.
