Art

Building Schools for the Future

25 Jan, 2021

Building Schools for the future is about balancing learning,  curriculum and developing. As parents think about the skills you left  your school with and whether they helped you in your life as an adult.  In short, did they prepare you for the Future?

The Future our  children will be stepping into is uncertain and complex. It will be like  nothing we have known.  Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and  pervasive technologies will alter the job market. According to a CNN  report in 2017, for children joining KG today - 65% of the jobs they  will step into have yet to be invented.

What will they be doing -  maybe roles linked to artificial intelligence and machine-learning and  robotics. Or maybe nanotechnology, 3-D printing, or genetics and  biotechnology. We don’t know but we do know that rapid technological  change is changing the skill requirements for most jobs.

So how do  we design a school curriculum that will deliver the leaders of tomorrow  and equip our children with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed  in the future? We need our educators to teach skills for jobs we don’t  know exist yet, solving problems we’ve never seen before and won’t see  for years.

So what are the kinds of jobs that could exist?  Extinction Revivalists - Robotic Earthworm Drivers - Time Hackers -  Amnesia Surgeons Mass Energy Storage Developers and Plant Educators are  some indicators that Google threw up.

What skills will industry  leaders be looking for? Design skills and disruptive thinking is  mandatory at Google & IBM. Collaboration is critical. No one works  solo.  They also look for creators, makers and problem solvers. Some of  the key skills in high demand are leadership, collaboration, creativity  and innovation.

Could robots replace teachers? Technology is now  fully woven into the curriculum and we are seeing greater use of  robotics within the school, but perhaps the best classroom technology  will continue to be the teacher who will build the human connections  that are at the core of these skill areas. Can robots teach  collaboration, creativity and disruptive thinking? Not yet!

Schools  struggle to develop a curriculum that helps teachers teach the skills of  the future. And therein lies the problem. Will children be equipped  with the skills to solve the problem of global warming in a curriculum  that omits design, technology and arts?

Sir Ken Robinson calls for a  new Balance – one that builds a creative and cultural education around  the core curriculum of Language Arts, Maths, Science and The Humanities.

 Over a number of years the balance in education appears to have been  lost. We force young people to choose between the arts and sciences at  the age of 14!
So here are some Mantras for the future for Parents & Schools

1. Academic ability alone will no longer guarantee success or personal  achievement. While employers continue to demand high academic standards,  they also now want more. They want people who can adapt, see  connections, innovate, communicate and work with others. These are  skills schools need to build into their Teaching & Learning  processes.
2. The creative industries will continue to thrive – they  will interact with innovations in science and technology. So we need to  place emphasis on the Arts and build creative thinking processes into  our Teaching & Learning
   Most young people will change not just  jobs, but occupations, several times in their working lives. There is a  growing emphasis on freelance work, short contracts, self-employment  and entrepreneurial ability. So adaptability and resilience is KEY
3. Every single person in the world of work will need the ability to  change, the self-confidence to learn new things and the capacity for  overview. The curriculum, therefore, calls for breadth, for programs for  the emotional wellbeing of our children which foster a strong sense of  self and above all, resilience.
4. We will have to stop viewing  children through the lens of academic ability alone and appreciate that  each individual has highly developed alternative intellectual abilities.  A child with poor spatial abilities may have high linguistic or aural  intelligence. Some children have particular capacities for mathematics,  for music, for dance, for languages, or for several of these. When  children discover their real strengths, there can be a dramatic change  in their overall motivation in education.
5. Physical education is  central to this balance in the curriculum. It contributes directly to  the physical health of young people. There is now evidence that physical  education can also enhance creative processes by quickening  concentration and mental agility.

Finally - let’s be prepared  for a life of learning because our learning will never end. We need to  prepare our children to adapt and continuously learn because whatever  the world looks like in 2030 we need to be willing to acquire new skills  and experiences to prepare for 2050, and beyond.