Are American Kids Prepared for the Future?

As discussed in my previous articles ((https://tinyurl.com/mslink01, https://tinyurl.com/mslink2 and https://tinyurl.com/mslink03), the present-day American education system still stands on the foundations of what was created back in the day to meet the requirements of the first industrial revolution. With rapidly-evolving technologies already disrupting certain jobs with increased automation, we must question whether the current education system in the United States is preparing our kids for the future. 

Let me begin this article with an example of the kind of future that is awaiting our children, with the changes already visible today. At an Amazon Go store (and many more coming on a similar theme), there are no visible clerks and queues for something as simple as grocery shopping. These have been replaced by artificial intelligence, motion cameras, and other similar technologies. Customers can simply get whatever they want and walk out the door. An itemized invoice with accuracy down to the level of the brand of ice-cream chosen will be charged at the customer’s Amazon Prime account. Automation does not belong to sci-fi books anymore. It is real and it is the future. Imagine the kind of opportunities that our kids will be left with when they grow up and try to get jobs for themselves.

Today, many cities across the United States are striving to gain financial footing with millions of jobs in construction, transportation, and manufacturing lost to off-shoring and/or automation. These blue-collar jobs are being rapidly replaced by skilled professions in sectors like information technology and healthcare wherein most positions require more education than just a high-school diploma. This trend of automation will not only continue but also expand rapidly in the next few decades.

While the nation’s high-school graduation rates and successive college admission rates cross an all-time high in years, there still may be an element of job-readiness that may be predominantly incompatible with what the future entails. 

 “As emerging technologies rapidly and thoroughly transform the workplace, some experts predict that by 2030, 400 million to 800 million people worldwide could be displaced and need to find new jobs,” says Sarah Gonser in The Hechinger Report. 

While I have previously mentioned how the current education system in the US lacks proper structuring vis-à-vis the grading system and how the inclusion and importance of arts is limited in schools across the country, I also believe that the current education system isn’t even preparing our kids for life after graduation, including the job market. 

In Sarah’s essay, she mentions that a meager 25 % of high school seniors can do grade-level math and just 37% of seniors are proficient in reading. Such figures combined with the ever-increasing cost of higher education and the large portions of unfilled positions in skilled professions should be more than enough a reason to push policymakers to rethink the American education system as it stands today. 

What further supports this idea is a 2015 study by ACT Inc, the creators of the standardized testing used for college admissions in the US. The ACT study mentions that only 16% of college instructors rate their incoming freshmen as “well” or “very well” prepared for college-level academics. 

“In the face of something like automation, the people-facing jobs are the ones that are going to stay,” says Leah Moschella, senior program manager for the Pathways to Prosperity Network.

“So, we urgently need to equip young people with those skills — critical thinking, problem-solving and communication. These are the skills we're hearing from industry are essential,” she adds. 

This is in line with what Tony Wagner from Harvard University calls the “7 survival skills required for the 21st century” which also include collaboration, adaptability, entrepreneurship, to name a few. 

While we may not know exactly what the future entails, at least we can reach a logical conclusion as to what kind of skills need to be imparted in our schools to make our children ready for a future of automation, AI, and ever-evolving technologies. 

In-line with AI models predicting what jobs would be valuable in the future, we can gather that with increased automation and off-shoring, easily automated jobs like mechanics, transportation, finance, accounting, and production would be likely to decline globally. In turn, these jobs would be replaced by jobs that have a premium on more ‘human skills’ like managerial and professional positions like engineers, scientists, and data analysts along with creative positions like artists, performers, and entertainers. More so, jobs that aren’t completely replaced by automation will still move towards an emphasis on skills like critical thinking, creativity, care, and communication. According to a 2019 article in Medium, “we need not prepare our children for repetitive tasks. Many narrow AI is already better than anyone else at doing that, and within the next 10 years, artificial intelligence will take over even repetitive tasks that carry some unpredictability. According to the Global McKinsey Institute, 50% of all paid tasks today can be done better with AI. No sense in training our children to do those.”

Moreover, other than the soft skills I have mentioned above, even basic skills like language, information gathering, information analysis, and civic education will be required. Our education system must ensure fun and engaging ways of imparting both “hard” and “soft” skills if we are to adequately prepare our kids for the future. 

Now that we have an idea of what kind of skills will be important in the future, let’s take a look at what kind of reforms in the education system can better guide our kids and make them ready for the future. 

We know that AI and automation will soon take over most mechanical and repetitive jobs and with those jobs gone, creative and out-of-the-box jobs are what will remain. One of the most important goals for our education system should be to train our children to adapt to unpredictable situations and be as creative as possible. Imagination, critical thinking skills, and adaptability to solve problems will become key requirements for professionals in the future. We need our educators to weave certain training into the curriculum that allows the students to practice and integrate what they learn more holistically. 

Children also need to be given complete freedom to explore whatever subject they are most passionate about and given the space and resources to develop their skill-sets in their fields of choice. This could include anything ranging from interactive learning modules in K-12 classrooms to encouraging invention and entrepreneurship through extra-curricular activities. As parents, it is our duty to prepare our next generation for the future. We can rest assured that with the right tools given today, our kids can conquer all challenges tomorrow.