Dismantling the myth of educating for future jobs

This factoid, however, does reflect the correct common-sense view that the world is changing rapidly. Sure enough, we need education to provide us with the tools to cope with this rapid change; but this factoid explicitly focuses on jobs, which narrows the scope and the purpose of education. Leadership groups focus on the economy because this type of message encourages people to follow them. It also suggests a future of collective gains. These leadership groups see themselves as the custodians of the economy, so they believe it’s their responsibility to focus education on it.

Of course, the labour market does change, but it doesn’t change as dramatically as that factoid suggests and it certainly doesn’t always change in the direction people suggest.

For example, when the World Economic Forum issued this factoid, it paradoxically claimed that, despite not having been invented, future jobs will all be in IT and advanced manufacturing. They picked out a few likely sectors in which they’re well represented. These sectors actually employ a very small number of people today, and there’s no sign they’ll be employing more people tomorrow. Instead, the fastest growing occupational groups today are health and social care. This fact is rarely mentioned in discussions about the jobs of the future.

Naturally, this has made me very suspicious, and I think many commentators who understand the subject would feel the same. Together, we are wary of these pronouncements about future jobs and their implications for education.

At one level, we can’t plan for the future. We simply don’t know what our children’s lives are going to be like in 30 years. We certainly have little understanding of what jobs they’ll be doing. We have some hunches, but they don’t accord with the World Economic Forum. We can’t anticipate what new challenges may occur. As such, education can’t prepare children for the future except by making them happy, fulfilled, confident, flexible and trainable.

When considering the education system of the future, I think we recognise that there is a wide range of goals to be served. By deprecating the idea that education should train a future workforce, I don’t mean to suggest that education should ignore the needs of the future workforce.

I believe that we serve students by providing them with a general skill set and a high level of cognitive development in a wide portfolio of subjects. After all, these are valuable assets to have at any time, including the future.

I also believe that education has to function for civic and political purposes. That said, I’m sceptical of politicians’ attempts to engineer education to suit their political inclinations over the healthy functioning of society. Indeed, that’s a common concern in all democracies.

Politicians are charged with funding and directing our education system. We do need to serve these civic and political functions. For example, most countries teach their national history, not to the exclusion of all others, but predominantly over other histories. Although I am a historian and I believe we ought to teach a properly globalised history, I’m firmly in favour of teaching national history with particular intensity. After all, you have the resources at hand, and individuals must grow up to be citizens. In the United Kingdom, for example, students must learn enough about the functioning of their government to fulfil those civic functions. Certain traditional curricular demands will not go away no matter how the political winds blow.

I also believe studying a discipline is crucial. This is true irrespective of the discipline.

I am a historian. My daughter did a linguistics degree, while my son studied geochemistry. I was delighted with the results of each because they were learning subjects they loved. Moreover, they were doing them at a very high level. As part of this education, they also received general training that will serve them throughout their lives.

Nevertheless, that training wouldn’t have been as good if they weren’t trained in disciplines. Linguistics, chemistry and history are very traditional disciplines. They have a long history behind them which helps demarcate what’s essential to know and which tools to apply. These disciplines are always growing and developing despite the fact they are very traditional and, perhaps even, backwards-looking.

It is important to note the dangers of elevating one discipline over all others, which does occasionally happen, say, with computer science or maths. Yet, when there has been a ludicrous overemphasis of one discipline, children have still benefited. That said, when students are allowed to choose their discipline, they benefit regardless of their choice.

Overall, I think there are many traditional characteristics of education that one wants to preserve. Although some may consider this a permissive view, basic subjects should be taught alongside a child’s chosen speciality. Children should be given more choice about what they learn, and we shouldn’t worry too much about whether that’s going to impair or improve their futures.

It’s hard for me to extrapolate to other disciplines; however, I know from my own children’s experience that other fields are also increasingly concerned about including multiple perspectives. There is a trend across disciplines to incorporate multiple experiences that consider the world as a single system. This approach is naturally more complicated, but it takes into account different aspects that have previously been understood individually.

Although I’m loath to predict the future, it’s tough to imagine that these world perspectives won’t dominate the later 21st century. These perspectives will not cast us as all alike, rather they will make us aware of how we are and are not different.