I’ve been writing about education in a series I call ‘Zero-base Reconstruction’. And I probably will continue to write in this series. Why? Because I have plenty of ideas what can make education better for our future generation in a manner that will result in a better future, that will help us make better use of what we as humans accumulate as knowledge. Mass education was created for an Industrial Age to train people for industrial jobs in factories and to manage bureaucracies where corporations reign.
The future will not be one dominated by industrial factories or full of corporate bureacracies (even if there are still giant tech companies). The workers of the future will not be succeeding through complying to corporate policies or norms but trying to win by generating and executing on good ideas – for products, and service. And many new industries will open up that is about making human connections. Coaching one-to-one and in groups will become important; they will form core parts of HR in organisation. Mental health care will grow – in terms of developing new apps, services that help to deal with stress, train our minds to deal with the newer challenges of the world. Caregiving sector will also grow as people survive to older age and younger people will have to learn to serve them and make genuine connections.
All these will take place in parallel with increasing automation of significant parts of jobs which we used to think of as respectable: accounting, lawyering, audit, even PR. Hence the human connection aspects of most jobs will become more important because ultimately, the consumer is still human, and the most important decisions are still made by humans. The ability to think, to be creative in new contexts, new environments, under new constraints will be way more important.
The world needs teachers who can prepare our next generation for such a future; who can cultivate empathy, help people learn to make connections with others (and not just abstract concepts). And that’s why I chose to be a coach. How about you?