EDUCATING SKILLS FOR 2025 AND BEYOND

When we look back over 25-plus years after the liberalization and globalization of our economy, we realize that many things have changed remarkably, but others seem not to have changed at all. Issues that have been with us for the past 25 years include: how to make the learning and educating more exciting for students; how to communicate what they actually do; how to improve the writing and communication skills of graduates; how to bring the richness of mental and intellectual development into the current workforce up bringing individuals be responsible individual and citizen; how to give students a basic understanding of mental fitness; and how to get students to think about professional ethics and social responsibility. But for the most part, things have changed in astounding ways. We have moved from slide rules to calculators to PCs to wireless laptops to tablets. Just think of all that implies.

 Looking ahead to 2025, about 10 years, and setting goals should be a "piece of cake." But to gain some perspective, look back about 25 years, and think about what was not going on in 1990. There was no World Wide Web. Cell phones and wireless communication were in the embryonic stage. The big challenge was the inability of Indian manufacturing and services sector to compete in world markets; Dollar reserves was about to bury us economically. We hadn't even begun to inflate the global slow down, let alone watch it burst. And terrorism was something major issues.

 As today’s societies rapidly become ever more diversified both demographically and politically, our youth and adolescents face multifaceted challenges. What do these societal demands imply for the key skills that young people need to acquire? Answering this question is important not only for maintaining the quality of civic life and social cohesion, but also for enabling children and adolescents to develop into  healthy, productive, and autonomous adults. Defining such skills can also improve our assessment of how well prepared young people are for life’s challenges, and it can help us identify overarching goals for monitoring and evaluating education and intervention practices.

 So predicting the future, or even setting meaningful goals, is risky, even on a scale of a mere 15 years.  I read Dr. Kalam’s Vision 2020 made a study of predictions of the future and found one simple constant --- we always underestimate the rate of technological change and overestimate the rate of social change. That is an important lesson for our political leaders, industry leaders, bureaucrats, academicians, professional managers and lastly educators. We educate and train the men and women who drive technological and social change, but we sometimes forget that they must work in a developing social, economic, and political context.

 I envy the next generation of students because this is the most exciting period in human history for science and engineering. Exponential advances in knowledge, instrumentation, communication, and computational capabilities have created mind-boggling possibilities, and students are cutting across traditional disciplinary boundaries in unprecedented ways. Indeed, the distinction between science and engineering in some domains has been blurred to extinction, which raises some serious issues for learning and education.

 As we think about the challenges ahead, it is important to remember that students are driven by passion, curiosity, engagement, and dreams. Although we cannot know exactly what they should be taught, we can focus on the environment in which they learn and the forces, ideas, inspirations, and empowering situations to which they are exposed. Despite our best efforts to plan their education, however, to a large extent we simply wind them up, step back, and watch the amazing things they do.

 In the long run, making universities, colleges and schools exciting, creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding, and empowering milieus is more important than specifying curricular details with Life skills. In fact, that is our primary message for educating 2025 and beyond. Relevance of curriculum to the real world is extremely important for students. It is not necessary to look at the high-technology arte facts to value product related work. One has to look around to realise that every aspect of human surroundings necessitates enterprising behaviour. A systemic study of entrepreneurship provides opportunities for learning a broad spectrum of generic skills and competencies. In addition to subject-related competencies, development of generic skills and competencies for ‘Entrepreneurship’ should be an important objective of any educational programme for all students in general and elementary stage children in particular.

 Public policies fostering skills development for young people are crucial to the development of urban economies. Because of the diversity of the informal sector, training needs are wide ranging. For some youth, the most immediate need is a second chance to develop foundation skills. Approaches that combine basic literacy and numeracy with social protection can be particularly effective. Those who have already achieved foundation skills need equitable opportunities to develop further skills in a trade, as well as transferable skills to enable them to become more successful entrepreneurs.

 Academics led the way in core and Life skills development, but don't think we have led the way in systems of  skill development framework. In fact, as we observe developments in industry, government, and society, we are asking what in the world we should teach our students. We need to establish a proper intellectual framework within which to study, understand, and develop large, simple skill development systems. In other words, how can we practice so many skills?

 We need to recharge corporate entrepreneurial and academic R&D, as well as curricula in energy. We need to make energy an exciting, well supported, dynamic field that attracts the best and brightest young men and women and gives them opportunities to contribute and to innovate.

 So we must keep our sights high. But how are we going to accomplish all this teaching and learning? What has stayed constant, and what needs to be changed? But even we admit there is a good deal of truth in what extraordinary Visionary , Murray Gell-Mann, likes to say: "We need to move from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side." Studio teaching, team projects, open-ended problem solving, experiential learning, engagement in research, and the philosophy of CDIO (conceive/design/implement/operate) should be integral elements of education.