Education and Skills in the 21st Century
What is the future of education?
These days everyone talks about how there’s a global economic crisis, young people in many countries are struggling to find jobs, and the rich and poor gap is widening because of the decline of the middle class (e.g. in Western developed countries).There’s often a great lament that students aren’t learning STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects or that they shouldn’t be studying “useless majors” (the liberal arts) in college or university.
The fallacy among the STEM fanatics (people who want to impose STEM education on everyone) is that all education needs to do away with the liberal arts and focus exclusively on STEM as the ultimate key to success. The reason for this? Because they’ve got the most jobs! In other words they believe that education should only be designed to get people into jobs, more specifically STEM jobs. These jobs are believed by STEM fanatics to be the most profitable as these STEM fanatics aren’t really concerned about the STEM fields at all. They’re concerned, even obsessed with money and status.
John Hagel brings up excellent points in his article “What’s the Future of Jobs?” that illustrate why he is a contrarian to the conventional STEM education model (and why I am as well!).
Firstly, he states that education should no longer be thought of in terms of separate disciplines because all fields of knowledge, whether STEM or liberal arts, are interrelated in terms of how we see the world. Essentially, Hagel is in favor of a holistic education system over a disciplinary one.
Secondly, he remarks that the STEM fields are extremely vulnerable to automation (especially when focusing on the quantitative and systemic dimensions of STEM disciplines), which STEM fanatics are completely blind to acknowledging. Translation: The robots are coming, folks, and they’re going to be filling most current blue-collar and white-collar jobs by before the end of this century, and that includes STEM.
Thirdly, Hagel’s assertion is that STEM fanatics believe that everyone needs to become a “techie” in order to survive in an increasingly technological world. However, with the current direction technological advancement is going, you already don’t need to be a techie in order to use highly technologically advanced devices. The smartphone, Hagel says, is an excellent example of how you can have unlimited power in the palm of your hand. The best part: this technology can and will be usable by anyone!
Fourthly, the most fatal flaw of the STEM-only system according to Hagel is “if the children are not deeply passionate about these disciplines and simply going into them because they will provide a sustainable career, they will most likely fail as the mounting performance pressure leads to growing stress and ultimately burn out.” In other words, the drive for achievement is emphasized instead of the drive for mastery, and children are pressured to achieve and excel in school and get excellent grades, regardless of whether they’ve really mastered the subjects or not or whether their curiosity and creativity are stimulated or not.
In fact the emphasis on the drive for achievement over the drive for mastery is not only the most fatal flaw of STEM education, but of all traditional education systems since the 19th century.
As for alternatives to the analytical STEM-based system, Hagel suggests that the only alternative is to prepare the next generation for the upcoming new era by radically redesigning our education systems. His vision for the future of education is a holistic learning environment which encourages and emphasizes education which “draw[s] out and nurture[s] capabilities that today are only in the background, if present at all — capabilities like creativity, imagination, curiosity, and emotional and social intelligence that transcend conventional disciplinary boundaries.” Education comes from the Latin word educare, which means “to draw/take out”, “to train”, “to bring up”, so literally education is intended to be the drawing out of what students are born to be rather than an instrument that molds them into what society wants them to be.
It seems evident, from my observation, that we are past overdue for such a system. My alma mater high school, St. Mary’s School in Medford, Oregon, is currently phasing out of its old 19th and 20th century education style and moving towards 21st century learning by the 2017–2018 school year. St. Mary’s is now a member of the P-21 Partnership for 21st century learning. According to the P-21 website, the 21st century education building blocks are going to be: 1. Critical thinking and problem-solving, 2. Communication, 3. Collaboration, and 4. Creativity and innovation. The P-21 building blocks are clearly aligned with Hagel’s vision for 21st century education. The philosophy of P-21 is this:
“• All learners need and deserve 21st century learning opportunities to thrive as tomorrow’s leaders, workers, and citizens.
• Learning takes place throughout life in many places and spaces. From birth through their careers, learners need a broad range of experiences that develop their skills, dispositions and abilities to succeed. A strong foundation for success is rooted in learning that happens in and out of school.
• 21st century learning environments and opportunities are essential to prepare all students for the challenges of work, life, and citizenship in the 21st century and beyond, as well as ensure ongoing innovation in our economy and the health of our democracy.”
Another problem we have is traditional schooling is ill-equipped to prepare students for 21st century economy and society. It’s still stuck in a model centered around everyone sitting in a four-walled box we call the classroom in often uncomfortable desks, grading as a measure of someone’s worth, and especially making artificial deadlines and constraints to measure students’ performance in the classroom. Khan Academy founder Salman Khan bases his whole educational model on mastery learning rather than achievement learning, which emphasizes “What’s variable is when and how long a student actually has to work on something, and what’s fixed is that they actually master the material.” Khan states that mastery learning trains and reinforces students’ “mindset muscles” (Mindset muscles are from what I understand the belief that one can develop their skills through constant repetition, in other words a mental workout.) and allows them to learn material at their own pace, therefore enabling them to keep working on the material until they feel confident enough to master the content. Technology nowadays has enabled students to use resources like on-demand videos and adaptive exercises.
The development of “mindset muscles” not only gives students the confidence to master the necessary learning material, but it also teaches them the growth mindset and how to operate under such a mindset. Traditional 19th and 20th century education focuses on a fixed mindset, which states that just because you fail at a school subject or you get 95 percent instead of 100 percent on a school subject, you aren’t meant to learn that subject well because you’re not “gifted” with it. In other words, 19th/20th century education encourages perfectionism, and perfectionism is the enemy of mastery. 21st century education on the other hand focuses on a growth mindset, that you can learn and master any subject if you are given as much time as you want and you put your mind to it and that it’s ok to make lots of mistakes in the process. In essence, 21st century education encourages students to take agency over their learning and actively participate in the classroom and encourages a discussion-based model instead of the traditional lecture-based model, forming a dialogue between teachers and students. Khan states, “if you were allowed to be operating in a mastery framework, if you were allowed to really take agency over your learning, and when you get something wrong, embrace it — view that failure as a moment of learning — that number, the percent that could really master calculus or understand organic chemistry, is actually a lot closer to 100 percent.”
In addition to the perfectionism-centered emphasis of 19th/20th century education, 19th/20th century-style education in the 21st century is very ill-equipped when preparing young people for the realities of the 21st century world, which requires a brand new set of skills. The STEM model of education completely fails to take into account that students and recent graduates are now being expected to work in jobs that require adaptability as a core skill. An education model which reinforces rigidity and perfectionism is completely ill-suited for an environment which expects adaptability. Adam Shirley writes that of the 16 skills identified as important for the 21st century, 12 are social and emotional learning skills (SEL skills). SEL skills as more traditional jobs become increasingly automated will become increasingly important to know. We’re not just going to need to know reading, writing, and mathematics, but we’re also going to need to know creativity, problem solving, and communication, which are all related to social interaction. Since 1980, employment in the United States has increasingly shifted to jobs which require SEL skills.
Next comes the question of how to teach these skills. These skills can be taught in the classroom by cooperative group work, discussions, peer-to-peer teaching, problem-solving, and group reflection. Project and inquiry-based learning, Shirley says, can help children with learning critical thinking, technology use, and problem solving. This ties in back to the Latin word educare, or the “bringing out” of students’ capabilities in order to help students learn not only what their gifts are and develop them, but also learn and figure out how they can bring those gifts into service to the world around them.
In conclusion, the old paradigm of education is beginning to collapse along with the high level of disconnect between current education and the direction of the job market moving increasingly to automation. Education needs to be taught as interdisciplinary and holistic, needs to prepare students for the rapidly changing job market by training them to be adaptable and not rigid, needs to emphasize the drive to mastery instead of the drive to achievement, and needs to nurture people’s natural passions, interests, and talents and train them not just in technical and academic skills but also social and emotional skills. Education needs to draw out people’s capabilities and help them realize their full potential instead of being an instrument of social conformity. Education systems must recognize that learning takes place both inside and outside of school and after your schooling is finished your education is never finished. Education must also open the door for individualized learning and focus on the mastery of material rather than constrain the time frame in which it is completed and for students’ “mindset muscles” to be trained so that every student can have control of their own learning and learn how to learn not just what to learn. Education in the 21st century is overdue for a reboot, and we are part of the movement to make that happen.
