It’s become almost cliche to look to movies or literature for clues about what our present or our future might look like.
While Back to the Future had us all thinking that flying cars were a possibility, the news is showing us that driver-less cars will be a reality before the flying ones.
Cool. Science fiction is real. But, seriously, let’s think about the implications of driver-less cars – and not just for obvious things like the transportation industry – what about the implications on education? Specifically, let’s think about America’s high schools.
Just the creativity, innovation, and problem-solving necessary to go into developing a driver-less car – it’s absolutely mind-blowing. Most of today’s schools are not structured to promote that kind of thinking.
If we are going to give the young people of today anything, we have to give them opportunities to create, to collaborate, to solve problems, and to fail. You read that correctly, I said they need opportunities to fail. Our schools have to become safe spaces for inquiry, trial and error, and learning from mistakes if we hope to be competitive in the age of innovation.
Lectures, worksheets, packets, and multiple-choice questions are not preparing young people for the world of work that created a driver-less vehicle. In fact, McKinsey.com indicates that almost 30% of today’s jobs could be replaced by automation in the next ten years, which would mean major shifts in the types of jobs today’s young people will be competing for. The impact of automation and artificial intelligence could mean that millions of people would need to learn new skills or shift jobs.
Predictions for the next generation support the ongoing growth of technology, but also for hands-on specialties like electricians and plumbers. In the years ahead, there will be an increasing need for trades-people who also have computer skills as the space between these two worlds becomes smaller. The automotive industry saw this shift twenty years ago and computers completely changed both the industry and the training for technicians.
Innovations with technology are all we need then, right? Wrong.
Regardless of the impact that technology has on every day life, the ability to navigate human relationships will continue to be the single most important skill that today’s young people will need.
With the growing impact of technology and social media, there is greater opportunity to connect, but fewer opportunities for authentic connection. This leaves many young people without the practice necessary to master interpersonal skills. As a result,
All of this is likely to result in brilliant minds with no ability to build community, incredible creativity that can only exist in isolation, and problem-solving ideas that can’t be sustained with real humans.
So, we have an opportunity – well, actually, it’s a probertunity: a problem with an opportunity inside. We can make today’s high schools more hands-on, more minds-on, and more communication-on. We can be intentional about how we plan opportunities for young people to engage with the content, to question and explore, and to solve the problems that exist in their world. It does require that we let go of our preconceptions about what education should be and what the world should look like.
The classrooms that will prepare today’s youth for a future of driver-less cars and innovation will need to be built on inquiry with plenty of opportunity for trial and error and personal interaction. There will need to be more students talking and imagining possibilities. And there will need to be failure.
Are you in?
