According to an article by the British Chamber of Commerce (2015)[1], companies are disappointed with the quality of young candidates entering the job market. Even when searching Google for articles relating to millennials and the job market, one inevitably comes across the sentiment there are issues. For starters, millennials, or the me-generation, as they are called, are said to have entitlement problems, often believing they are worth much more than they deliver. They are self-centred and motivated by passion rather than reason and common sense. One blogger wrote that millennials lack the Protestant Ethic, the old tradition of working your hands to the bone just for a chance at creating a meaningful life (Fletcher 2014)[2].
This notion of millennial impotence appears to be supported by mountains of unemployment data. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2017)[3], youth unemployment is significantly higher in both developed and developing countries as compared to their national averages. For instance, the youth unemployment in the U.K was 11.4% in 2019, more than four times the national average of 2.7%. In the U.S, the phenomenon is the same – youth unemployment in 2019 was 8.4%, almost three times the national average of 3%. The South African unemployment statistics are jaw-dropping but present a similar statistical reality, with a youth unemployment rate of 63% against the backdrop of a 30.1% national average (StatsSA, 2020)[4].
We can conclude, therefore, that search parties are out. Policymakers around the world are desperately looking for solutions to curb youth unemployment. And companies are looking for ways of improving their productivity levels from people. So far, the media and large economic institutions are wagging their fingers at schools and blaming them for failing to produce economically viable individuals. For instance, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published a report titled “New Vision for Education: Unlocking the Potential of technology”[5] – a decree, as it were, that outlines what schools ought to do to get their act together.
The report identifies 16 skills deemed “critical” for the 21st century, as shown in figure 1 above. The further report declares that the WEF surveyed 100 countries and found gaps in the extent to which schools readily produce individuals with these skills, and as expected, they claim that developed countries do a far better job.
To remedy this problem, they developed an underwhelming model called the Closed Loop, where a team of educationists work together, firstly to determine learning objectives. After that, they compose a curriculum, which becomes a scripted manual for teachers to deliver instructions. Then, with the help of technology, they continuously assess the learners and provide tailored interventions to help them succeed. The report concludes with a catalogue of recommended software and case studies for implementing the Closed Loop model – a sales pitch masquerading as a report.
1.
To truly appreciate the scope of creating a vision for the future of education, it is necessary to begin by briefly scanning the annals of history to contextualise our present relationship with learning. Throughout the ages, the nature of education has always changed in accordance with the intellectual fashions of the times. For instance, Plato and Socrates, who lived between 428 and 322 BCE, established the idea of idealism, which is the notion that there is a perfect or ideal version of all things. Consequently, our pursuit of knowledge or betterment is actually a search for the ideal. In other words, when we work towards something or improve ourselves, we are merely moving closer to a pre-existing, albeit a more ideal version of that thing or ourselves. Take, for instance, learning music. We start off without knowledge and sturdily become better as we practice – or as we move towards the ideal.
Interestingly, the side effects of idealism manifested most prominently in the study of medicine. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine and a contemporary of Plato and Socrates, held a similar view. To him and his followers, illnesses were a kind of intrusion that caused an imbalance in the body. In other words, the body has an ideal state, which we experience as being healthy. They reasoned, therefore, that there must be physical causes of illnesses and that the correct diagnosis could lead to the right remedy. That was a revolutionary thought in a world steeped in alchemy, magic and the supernatural. Nevertheless, in the spirit of idealism, the Hippocratic school of thought held that diagnosis ought to be strictly observational and non-intrusive, lest one worsens the body by prodding, introducing foreign objects and further besmirching it from the ideal. As it turns out, that rule of non-intrusion contributed to a monumental setback in the advancement of medicine.
In John Barry’s masterpiece, The Great Influenza, he cites that it took 2000 years (with blips of advancement here and there) for the medical world to truly break this Hippocratic hangover. [6]Only in the 18th and 19th centuries, when a different school of thought gained traction, did physicians find the courage to dissect, prod and probe the body to understand how it works and discover what could otherwise never be known, such as microorganisms like bacteria and viruses. In this regard, we can see how idealism, as an underlying school of thought, precipitated an epistemological blind spot in the medical world. Furthermore, this example shows how philosophies can manifest into advances and limitations for education and what we believe can and ought to be known.
This understanding, therefore, beckons the following questions. What are the philosophical underpinnings of our times? And how are these ideas manifesting themselves in our relationship with education? Only by first answering these questions can a vision for the future of education, in earnest, be crafted.
2.
While we are still enjoying the fruits of the Enlightenment and the pre-Enlightenment ages, we are currently in a new intellectual age. The post-modern era, as it is called, is anchored by new assumptions about how the world works, and the consequences will be no different from the introduction of idealism in 500bc, rationalism in the 17th Century, and existentialism in the 20th Century. Our times will similarly precipitate new advances and limitations in our understanding of knowledge and what ought to be known.
To begin with, today people are more empowered to service their self-interests more acutely than ever before. People are empowered to adopt beliefs and values that are not prescribed by the culture that underpins their biological or geographic origins. Instead, we can reach into the virtual cosmos, as it were, and find other, more resonant communities and people. Manuel Castell, a professor at the University of Southern California, calls this process individuation, following Carl Jung’s postulation that a wholesome person is one who has discovered and come to terms with all aspects their being; one who can resist mass-mindedness, especially the kind that was prevalent during the height Marxism and Nazism.[7] Castel argues that “…there is a shift toward the reconstruction of social relationships, including strong cultural and personal ties that could be considered a form of community, based on individual interests, values, and projects.”[8]
Given Castel’s arguments, however, it is also worth noting a 2017 report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) citing more than 300 million cases of depression and anxiety, seemingly a new psychological epidemic of our times.[9] Some scholars attribute this new wave of depression and anxiety to narcissism – a byproduct of Castel’s hyper-individuation, one could say. In his book, Individuation and Narcissism, Mario Jacoby points out that blindly pursuing self-interests can lead to the notion that happiness is (in a platonic sense) an ideal that ought to be chased at whatever cost.[10] In the feverish pursuit of happiness, it follows that ideas that appear to differ or threaten one’s happiness ought to be irradiated. Ultimately today’s intellectual horizon, supported by the ease of finding in-groups, and the significantly low cost of slandering and provoking others behind the veil of the internet promotes intolerance and anxiety amongst people and communities with seemingly different objectives or ideals.
3.
With this basic understanding of the intellectual mood in which we live, we can now turn towards education. Even though education has changed throughout the ages, the promise of passing down valuable knowledge for the next generation to survive and thrive remains constant. As it stands, we live under the influence of three major intellectual epochs: the pre-modern age, which is characterised by the belief in gods, providence, miracles and alchemy; the modern age, where rationality and the power of the mind to change the world replaced our eternal patience for God’s intervention; and the post-modern era – where we believe we are the centre of the universe. These intellectual personalities, as it were, are all fighting for a share of our minds.
From this perspective, we can appreciate the overwhelming difficulty of trying to manage, let alone conceive a comprehensive system for the future of education. Nevertheless, the question that ought to underpin any grand vision for the future must respond to these complexities as effectively as Horace Mann did for American schools during his time. Mann is widely regarded as the father of the schooling system as we know it today. He is remembered for envisioning and transitioning schools from being strictly religious i.e. belonging to the pre-modern age, to becoming more secular and having a national reach, in keeping with the transition from Monarchs and churches, to constitutional democracies.
In this regard, the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) vision tries to follow in the footsteps of Mann by advising and even referring to technologies that offer tailored learning pathways. Indeed, this is an inadvertent response to Castell’s observation of individuation. But what is confusing about their vision, is that it also promotes the central development of scripted curricula.
The first challenge with this approach is that if learners have access to the internet, they will have access to the best teachers worldwide, making prescribed curricular and scripted lessons obsolete. A second, more fundamental problem is the assumption that a central committee knows what should be learned in the 21st century. At with dawn of the Enlightenment era, disciplines emerged spontaneously out of curiosity rather than dogmatic promulgation of preconceived curricula. Similarly, the modern, individuated child is spontaneously learning new disciplines such as podcasting, video editing, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies without the aid of formal education. If there is anything to learn from history, it is that the current notion of preconceived curricula runs the risk of shrinking into obscurity, as did the pre-enlightenment religious schools.
The WEF’s report is not entirely flawed, however. Basic skills, such as literacy and numeracy have rightfully enjoyed a degree of importance in their report. In addition, the report extends the catalogue of what they consider literacy by including ICT literacy, financial literacy and cultural literacy. Regarding their Competencies category – that being critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration – they are misappropriated as 21st-century skills. These are old skills whose use advanced the frontiers of humanity throughout history. Their third category, what they call character qualities, including leadership, adaptability, grit and curiosity, call for more scrutiny.
For years psychologists agonised over understanding personality. Today, there are countless frameworks that promise to help one understand who they are. Nevertheless, all of them hinge on a long-standing assumption that we are born with different personality dispositions. In other words, what the WEF refers to as Character Qualities, are better understood as personality traits that develop naturally with varying degrees in different people. An entrepreneurial person, for instance, will show grit, leadership and adaptability. In terms of the Big Five Personality Traits [11], their entrepreneurial disposition is a result of scoring highly in Conscientiousness, Openness To Experience, and Intellect, while scoring low on Neuroticism. More importantly, these are traits that influence what one prefers learning, or which skills they would rather acquire. Hence the WEF understanding of Character Qualities is misplaced because they are really referring to personality traits that occur naturally and in varying degrees amongst people, rather than skills that can be learned.
Unfortunately, the report is silent on the most significant intellectual malaise of the post-modern era, that being narcissism, depression, anxiety and intolerance. It could be that the notion of Character Qualities, although misplaced, was the WEF’s attempt to capture the essence of this post-modern problem. Even if that were the case, the problem of understanding oneself and building character is ancient. For instance, all cultures have some form of what I will loosely call “the rites of passage”. The English had fraternities such as scouts, where children learned cultural values, respect, teamwork and the like. Africans and some Asian cultures take young boys and girls into seclusion to teach them about their origins, values, poetry and history. All these are efforts at developing character qualities. Hence, I contend that developing character is an old problem, and the WEF has once again misappropriated it as a 21st Century skill.
4.
Given the enormous task of crafting a vision for the future of education, the WEF’s report is economical in sophistication. It bends towards propagating a system, the Closed Loop, which is simply a new label for the current curriculum-based education system with a lick of technology to mend the cracks. The report makes a mild attempt at capturing the need for universal literacy but of course, universal literacy is an old idea that was promoted by the ilk of Horace Mann in the 19th Century. Furthermore, the report misappropriates personality traits as skills and fails to deal with today’s biggest psychological challenges, emanating from our changing cultures, adoption of technology and hyper-individuation.
We live in altogether different times. While businesses are finding it challenging to work with millennials and younger people, it is also worth noting that millennials, the internet-driven generation, are finding it equally difficult to work with traditional businesses. Therefore, instead of wagging fingers at the education system to manufacture proper humans, it is more sensible to appreciate the intellectual era we live in because it influences our relationship with learning. Among others, people are no longer satisfied with dedicating their whole lives to working for one company. Instead, people are learning new and more complex skills, of course, as part of their journey on the individuation path. In addition, people are looking for new ways of dispensing with their skills in more intimate ways rather than as a cog in a large cold company.
My position is that we ought to accept individuation as a more prevalent cultural phenomenon. In other words, the sovereignty of the individual is rising, and policies that wish to cling to archaic hierarchical systems, rather than new networked social systems will fizzle into irrelevance, as did the monarchies and the churches as the Enlightenment age gained traction.
[1] BCC, 2015. BCC: Businesses and schools ‘still worlds apart’ on readiness for work [WWW Document]. URL https://www.britishchambers.org.uk/news/2015/11/bcc-businesses-and-schools-still-worlds-apart-on-readiness-for-work (accessed 8.24.20).
[2] Fletcher (2014) Why Youth Are Unemployable, Adam F. C. Fletcher. Available at: https://adamfletcher.net/why-youth-are-unemployable/ (Accessed: 24 August 2020).
[3] OECD (2017) Education at a glance: Transition from school to work (Edition 2017). Available at: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/data/19558ffb-en.
[4] Africa, S. S. (2020) ‘Vulnerability of youth in the South African labour market | Statistics South Africa’, 23 June. Available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=13379 (Accessed: 13 April 2021).
[5] World Economic Forum, “New Vision for Education: Unlocking the Potential of Technology,” 2015. [Online]. Available: https://widgets.weforum.org/nve-2015/.
[6] J. M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Penguin, 2020.
[7] C. G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society, Edition Unstated edition. New York: Berkley, 2006.
[8] M. Castells, “The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective,” OpenMind, 2013. https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/the-impact-of-the-internet-on-society-a-global-perspective/ (accessed Aug. 26, 2020).
[9] World Health Organisation, “Depression and Other Common Mental Disorders: Global Health Estimates,” 2017. Accessed: Aug. 26, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/254610/WHO-MSD-MER-2017.2-eng.pdf;jsessionid=3C066D350D7C8E8630F9F3DF6844E976?sequence=1.
[10] M. Jacoby, Individuation and Narcissism: The psychology of self in Jung and Kohut. Taylor & Francis, 2016.
[11] A. G. Y. Lim, “The Big Five Personality Traits,” Simply Psychology, 2020. https://www.simplypsychology.org/big-five-personality.html.
