Continued from the the previous page where I asked, "Are our children prepared?"
Are WE, their parents, prepared to prepare them??
Shift Happens: The Future of (Your Child's) Work -- Not to Mention Their Education -- And The Skills They Will REALLY Need
If one thing IS certain, it's the 'uncertain future'.
There has been a shift in the world (it happens).
Change is happening at a faster rate than ever before in the history of the planet.
As a teen, could you have predicted that you would be carrying a smartphone in your pocket by the time you were in your forties or fifties?
How can we even begin to fathom what technology will exist when our children reach mid-life?
Futurist Ray Kurzweil and his 'Law of Accelerating Returns' says something like this:
From 2000 to 2014, humans achieved the same amount of change and progress as happened during the entire 20th century... 100 years of progress in just 7 years.
He continues:
"If we’re being truly logical and expecting historical patterns to continue, we should conclude that much, much, much more should change in the coming decades than we intuitively expect." [1]
Here's a glimpse of what's already happened:
This is what it's like:
The BIGGEST problem, for your family?
(Besides the fact that life FEELS normal and not like you're standing at the base of an 'uncertain' mountain of change?)
It's this...
Our kids (just like we were) are being educated with a system that was implemented in the 19th century (and has roots earlier than that).
It's a linear, Industrial Age model.
It's huge and leviathan like, slow moving and slow changing.
And remember, we are NO LONGER in the Industrial Age.
We entered the Information Age in the mid-20th century, but we are already out of that too and into the Creative or Innovation Age.
Yes, we've made innovations and changes to schooling since the 1800s.
Positive changes have been made in the public system...
...not to mention
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homeschooling
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unschooling
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worldschooling
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charter schools
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trade schools
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alternative schools
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forest schools
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and all sorts of other cool things that have happened.
But ultimately, all these types of 'schooling' are all just another version of a vehicle that was invented in the 1800s.
What we really need to do is stop building another 'ground vehicle' model and start building a rocket.
(See image below.)
Most forms of schooling and education as we currently know them (at home, on the go, or in the classroom) have become outdated.
Not because they didn't work or do their job...
But because the future we're headed for will look drastically, exponentially different than the past or the current present.
They were what we needed to transport us to where we are now -- our present reality with all it's abundance and technology.
They have been helpful and useful.
But these education models can't take our children to where they need to go next...
Mostly because they are built on a chassis (the frame of a vehicle) that can't be transformed into a rocket.
We can't prepare our children for an 'uncertain future' with an outdated education model that is training them for a 'future' that is already in the past --
-- a model that is preparing them for the world we are already living in (which they'll remember as their childhood)...
...but this is not the world they will inhabit as adults.
We can't take our children to the moon -- metaphorically speaking -- using a vehicle that was designed to drive on the ground.
Gratefully, the antiquated, 19th Century, linear educational system is being forced to change.
"...we cannot let schools return to “normal” after the COVID-19 pandemic. This is an opportunity to reimagine instruction and adopt approaches that forever change learning for all students. Let’s learn from what works.. and apply that to rethink what is possible." 1
'School' (no matter where it takes place) should never be the same again, especially if we truly want to prepare the next generation for a future that none of us can predict --
-- one where the places and positions our children will work at don't exist...
...and will be dependent on technology that hasn't yet been invented, and will require skills that aren't currently being taught.
To design an 'Education for the Future' we have to make changes that actually work -- and last -- by scrapping our current models, ideas, paradigms, & approaches and rebuilding from the ground up.
This time we'll build a rocket with wings, not something with wheels.
The 'Cornerstones' -- The Most Important Skills of the 21st Century.
There is a growing gap that your children will fall into when they reach adulthood.
It is the gap between poverty and wealth, education and ignorance, happiness and misery.
The middle ground, the middle class, the middle, 'okay' life is already beginning to disappear.
This trend is expected to continue and increase in disparity.
