20th Century Ideas We Need to Change - Education
Pete Domican
I use strategy and change consulting skills together with extensive cross functional and cross industry experience to help businesses plan and manage change.
Introduction?
We’re nearly one quarter through the 21st century. Yet, in the midst of huge technological change we’re still wedded to the 20th century and even the 19th century in many of our social constructs - ideas that have been created and accepted by the people in a society.?
The world of education is ripe for innovation but the extent to which new technology is adopted will be dependent on overcoming huge barriers to change. This article covers the UK system but it’s relatively easy to apply to other major economies.??
Education?
We can classify education in many different ways but here’s mine. There are essentially three broad categories, based on our development as human beings.?
The first is ‘Growing up’ where our education coincides very much with our physiological and social development. These include?
There is then a middle ‘transition’ group from 16 to early 20s which covers?
This phase of education still has some connection to physiological and social development (more particularly the latter) but it is essentially the educational foundation for a future career. On completing these courses, many of us would consider that we have left ‘the education system’ (The ‘That’s the last exam I’ll ever do’ Fallacy!)
The final group is ‘adult education’ which is primarily around further development around a career or retraining for a different one. This can include?
New Challenges of Education
The ‘growing up’ phase of education has remained remarkably similar since the 19th century although the age range has extended downwards (as societal trends for women in work have changed) and upwards to reflect an increase in societal wealth (both my parents had to leave school at 14 to go to work and earn money) and an increasing need for a more educated workforce as products and services became more complex and a more developed range of skills and knowledge were needed.?
In the late 1980s and 1990s, the concept of ‘a job for life’ essentially disappeared from the private sector. Globalisation and the relentless pursuit of ‘shareholder value’ has meant that roles are far more transient and this then morphed into an accepted idea that people would change professions several times in their career.?
This is not particularly scary provided that the costs of switching for the individual are low. However the advent of automation in manufacturing and the introduction of AI into white collar work is now starting to increase the risk of redundancy of the role and the costs of switching enormously as the level of retraining for another job shoots up. Indeed the threat is that the pace of AI and automation ‘learning’ is exceeding a human’s ability to learn!?
New Pressures
In this light, we can look at existing education and see a number of pressure points. Firstly, as low skilled jobs decrease, education becomes a life long learning process vs a predominantly front loaded one. This has huge implications for the model both of further education itself and the funding model.?
Secondly, the skills required to be taught at school and University will need to be different from those currently taught. Much of my education, beyond reading and writing, was based around memorisation of ‘stuff’. In an Internet era, this type of learning became increasingly less important and with ChatGPT, it’s essentially useless.?
The question is what is the best educational model to train people for a future where there is huge uncertainty around the future of work. That’s not to say that things aren’t happening, but that the pace of change is increasing rapidly and as we’ll see, rapid change in state education is difficult.?
Opportunities
Needless to say that ‘EdTech’ can provide opportunities to start to address some of these issues. The advent of online learning accelerated by the pandemic and developments in AI present opportunities to develop a more personalised learning environment for pupils and groups, which play to individual aptitudes vs the ability to fit in with standardised classroom teaching where the pace may be too fast for some or too slow for others.??
Interactive educational software also enables students to practise and reinforce their skills in a fun and engaging way. Furthermore, immersive technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have the potential to revolutionise the learning experience.?
领英推荐
The potential exists to connect students across areas,countries or even globally creating interaction with peers from different cultures and backgrounds and encouraging creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. EdTech also empowers teachers, providing them with tools to streamline administrative tasks, track student progress, and provide timely feedback with teachers able to focus more on individualised support.
We can see these changes taking place at the ‘adult education’ level but incorporating this into the ‘growing up’ and ‘transition’ phases will be more difficult.?
Barriers to Change
Most of the ‘growing up’ phase of education in many countries is provided by the State. As with health, decisions about the type of education system, the model and level of funding and what is taught is funded by the politicians who are responsible to the voters. Therefore change to the education system is often highly political.
However, while like health, many people’s views tend to be based on their own experience, many will have little or no experience of the current system because they or their children have passed a particular stage of life. Many voters may be 40+ years outside the school system.
Much of the argument centres around the traditional issues around the model of classroom teaching e.g. classroom size, streaming (comprehensive v selective - grammar schools) and subjects taught. Therefore radical change is difficult and slow.?
Funding is also a problem. Data shows that there is a strong link between digital exclusion and social exclusion. During COVID, areas of deprivation were unable to make good use of the remote teaching available. With school buildings needing repair, justifying IT spend becomes difficult.?
Although technology is deployed by universities, there is inertia built into the ‘business model’. The University of Oxford was founded in 1096, Cambridge in 1209. Much of the value of their degrees is not derived from technology but by reputation and the informal networks created. The appetite for democratised learning is not universal.
While some teachers may be keen to utilise these tools and embrace change, many others will feel uncomfortable and ill-equipped to move to a more personalised form of teaching e.g. in technological skills or in developing an entrepreneurial mindset.
The Future
Education in the 19th century and 20th century was driven by the needs of an industrial society and we developed an education system to supply that. As technology replaces labour, the demands of the businesses we have today are being increasingly met by the output of our universities rather than schools.?
Many jobs specify a degree, not primarily because the work requires knowledge and a university degree in that field but the skills acquired in a university course e.g. researching, collaboration, logical thinking, developing an original point of view, presentation skills etc which could be developed at an earlier stage. The ongoing debate about the value of arts degrees speaks to this waste although, of course, there’s also an argument for the need for arts graduates!?
Over the next ten years, I expect EdTech to be used increasingly in ‘adult education’ and organisations to take a more active role in skills education, particularly as Brexit has made economic immigration more difficult.?
Final Thoughts
Over the longer term, I believe that the clear step from what was an industrial economy to a technology driven one will place an increasing pressure on the state school system to respond. That’s not to say that nothing is happening, but it’s likely to be iterative change vs transformative.
Eventually, the widening gulf between edtech in later stage education and state education will require the UK to make a transformative investment into technology in education but I think it could be a while, purely because of lack of funds.?
Until Next Time
Pete
Summer Break
I’ve been writing a weekly column now for the last nine months so I’m going to be taking a break over the summer to take stock. At some stage, I’ll be asking for some help in developing the future of this blog.?
I hope you and your family have an excellent summer.?