In the era of Google, Wikipedia and social media, our education is stuck in a factory model better suited to the nineteenth century than the twenty-first.
In the modern world, our children don’t need to be force fed facts but should learn skills such as creativity, collaboration and problem solving. Two thirds of pupils in school currently will end up doing jobs that don’t exist yet, so how can a tedious diet of Gradgrindian learning possibly prepare them for the challenges of the future?
This is a ubiquitous narrative in education, used by a variety of company leaders, consultants and, most recently, politicians. Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, was the most recent politician to quote the “jobs that don’t exist yet” statistic, this time attributed to the World Economic Forum. Other sources for similar statements include the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and Oxford University. Many of you reading this may have heard the statistic from other sources when discussing issues of graduate recruitment. If so many people are saying it, surely it must be true?
Let’s look at the claim in more detail. Perhaps the most surprising thing about it is that it’s a claim that’s not new:
The idea that our schools should remain content with equipping children with a body of knowledge is absurd and frightening. Tomorrow’s adults will be faced with problems about the nature of which we can today have no conception. They will have to cope with the jobs not yet invented.
This comment wouldn’t be out of place in a tweet from an education technologist but in fact is a quote from 1966. He is right, you may be thinking; there are many jobs that exist now that wouldn’t have been dreamt of 50 years ago. App developers, data managers and communication directors are examples of three job titles which would have been meaningless at that time.
Yet, fundamentally, are those jobs so different? The technology surrounding the roles may have changed but much of the skill required to carry out the jobs are not so different from what would have been required for analogous jobs in 1966. Electronic engineers needed sound knowledge of physics and maths, with an ability to apply them in 1966; IT designers need similar skills today. Bookkeepers need numeracy, an eye for detail and an ability to cross-reference different pieces of information; so do data managers. Copywriters needed literacy, skill in formal and informal writing as well as a literary flair in compiling articles; comms directors would argue that is precisely what’s required in today’s PR world.
So, at the risk of sounding like a (younger) Victor Meldrew, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that the jobs of tomorrow are going to require radically different skills from school-leavers and university graduates than they did 20 or 50 years ago. The titles may be different, but then they always have been. The Victorians were notorious for embellishing fairly mundane jobs with grandiose descriptions: “Delineator of the Natatorial Science” (swimming teacher) and “Tripocaptontic Perruquier” (wig maker). I dare say some of the more futuristic job titles such as Talent Aggregator”, “Financial Technologist” and “Organisational Quartermaster” (no, I am not making these up) will be rather more down to earth than they sound.
So, next time you hear the latest futurologist talking about how schools are dreadfully outdated, take it with a pinch of salt. All of the technological marvels we are witnessing now were developed by men and women who passed through the traditional educational system we would recognise. It served them well, and I have no doubt it is doing the same for today’s youngsters.