"Where is a good place to start? Reading skills. I know - hard to believe that in this day of age, only about one out of three fourth graders are proficient in reading. Why? Screen time for one. Also, the reading and writing thing should go hand in hand. Content, style, comprehension - everything. And speech communication is important. Small group communication. I could go on and on. And all this is important BEFORE the technical skills needed to fit into this workplace with has dizzying new skills and technologies developing before our very eyes."
Here is the good news, bad news thing again. And for the young ones - please pay attention. I have addressed this issue before. I continue to do research on it, as I don't want to be labeled as a "panic merchant". But please hear me out. By the end of this decade (and that is about 3 1/2 years from now), many, many of the lower skilled jobs which we know of will be gone. Not gone as is evaporated - gone as far as being available for humans to do. And how many "knowledge" jobs will be gone? Estimates are about 15% of them. And that number is expected to grow as we enter the 2030's.
With Generative AI coming onto the scene (quickly, I may add), part of the jobs being offered will vanish into the land of automation. Work will start to look a whole lot different than anything we have seen before. With the paucity of lower skilled jobs existing in the upcoming marketplace, many futurists are holding onto a wish and a prayer that new "human type" jobs will also be in the offing. But what will these jobs look like? How can our youth train for them when they are currently undefined?
Now I am really going to set off the alarm for dark days ahead for some. In the next 1,000 days or so, our education system needs to redefine itself as teaching the future, and not the past. I know what is being taught these days and how it is being taught. Hint: Not good enough. Generative AI is being developed to "think" as good as, if not better than humans. And then there is also this. With all things being equal, a humanoid robot (and there will be millions by the end of this decade) loaded with AI can work better, longer, cheaper, and more error free than most humans. It will be hard for a young person right out of high school, tech school or college to compete with that.
We are coming up to a Future Shock which would make Alvin Toffler turn over in his grave. Whereas Toffler was most concerned with the stress of over selection and information overload, today's stressors will be as basic as "how do I fit into this brave new world of automation and AI"? Are we late to the party in prepping our kids for this once uncertain future which is now looking very certain? Years late. We are preparing our kids and grandkids for yesterday's world, when our new world is changing almost daily.
Where is a good place to start? Reading skills. I know - hard to believe that in this day of age, only about one out of three fourth graders are proficient in reading. Why? Screen time for one. Also, the reading and writing thing should go hand in hand. Teach more and better content, style, comprehension - everything. And speech communication is also important. Small group communication is a must. I could go on and on. And all these are important BEFORE the technical skills needed to fit into this workplace with has dizzying new skills and technologies developing before our very eyes.
Final thought. Each day, every day for the next thousand days, our kids need to be taught the right stuff in schools. No matter the grade. For crying in the beer school districts, please at least teach the basics! When my kids were in school, at dinner time (the nights I was home), I would quiz them on some basic facts (mostly stuff I remembered from high school). The correct answer got them a desert as a prize. They hated it when I did that.
But that is what our schools need to do today. Teach the right stuff and then push and challenge. The "desert" today will not be a bowl of ice cream. It will be getting a job in a new type of market which is still being defined.
The time is now. The future is very, very close. We have no days to waste.
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