What to teach your child to achieve success in the future

Why It's Time to Change the Approach to Learning

Sociologists say that in the next 10-15 years, up to 20% of existing professions will disappear. And at least as many new ones will appear. By 2030, according to experts from the McKinsey Global Institute, at least 375 million jobs will evaporate from the labor market. The work that humans do today will be taken over by robots. There is even a special service with which you can determine if your profession is at risk. However, we are not talking about you now, but about children.

We are still preparing children for life in the conventional twentieth century, while the world has already changed and continues to change.

Do you think that early development, a mathematics lyceum and admission to a prestigious faculty of economics at some capital university guarantee a child the position of at least an accountant, and with good hands, rapid growth to the CFO of a large corporation? Okostya! At the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, economists and accountants were named These jobs are set to disappear fastest in the US among the main losing professions: in this area, the maximum number of layoffs is expected in the coming years.

The skills that will be decisive when hiring in a robotic tomorrow do not play a significant role today, we ignore them. Meanwhile, in order not to get lost in the new world, people will be forced to pump skills in which they are still superior to robots. This is what defines the new principles of training and education.

Unfortunately, standard modern schools still teach children skills from the last century. Therefore, it is so important that each parent explains five simple things to a son or daughter.

What to teach your child

1. Do not cram

In terms of the ability to memorize, we - humans - have lost to computers and robots for a long time. The amount of knowledge that theoretically can be put into the head of a student in 10 years does not exceed 1 GB.

Count it yourself: an average textbook containing 150 pages of 2,400-2,500 characters each weighs about 0.35 MB. Let the children study 10 such textbooks a year. Then the volume of textual information received by them for 11 years of study will be less than 40 MB. Let's add here additional extracurricular activities and reading, pictures and learning other languages … Even if we increase the school 40 MB by 25 times, we will get only 1 GB of information.

Now let's compare. The entire UK archive, which stores the complete history of the state for a millennium, is approximately 70 TB. As for computers, this year the memory of a single electronic computing device has already reached HP Enterprise introduced the computer with the largest memory capacity of 160 TB.

This means that if you still consider it important to cram into the memory of your child the years of Tutankhamun's reign or, say, the nuances of Abelian diversity, your child has lost to machines right now. He spent time and energy cramming unnecessary information, while his peers-competitors were acquiring another, much more important skill.

2. Be open to new things

“The model in which people go to school for the first 20 years of life and then work in the acquired profession for the next 40 or 50 years is broken,” said Susan Land, social relations expert and co-author of the McKinsey Global Institute study. "We're going to have to think about continuous learning throughout our careers."

This means that the most important skill that a child must take out from school is the ability and desire to learn.

And for this it is important to organize the learning process so that learning does not become a heavy and therefore terrible burden for the student.

There is no need to pore over mathematics, "until you do everything." Tired - take a break. Switch over. You will return to mathematics when you again feel the strength and interest in yourself. Well, or you won't come back if you get carried away with something new.

3. Focus on what is really interesting

“You can't earn money with this,” - parents often brush aside any, as it seems to them, stupid hobbies of the younger generation. And they stubbornly push their son or daughter to become lawyers (what if he becomes the director of the legal department of a large corporation?), Programmers (what if he grows up to “senior”?), Managers (top management sounds solid!), Doctors (by all means the head doctor!) … And, in general, parents can be understood: the entire XX century prepared them for a vertical career, when from rags to riches, step by step, from students to employees, from workers to bosses, from bosses to big boss.

But the world has changed, and now a horizontal career is coming to the fore. This is when you do not rush upward, but simply do what you like: well, for example, porcelain dolls or weapons “for the Middle Ages”. At the same time, you are improving, your works are getting cooler day by day. Even if only 500 people on the planet are interested in your hobby, thanks to the Internet these people find you. And now your coolest dolls or daggers in the world become in demand, grow in price, and you acquire the status of a master.

No robot can put its soul into a product the way a person can. This means that the very thing to which the heart lies, may ultimately turn out to be insurance for your child against losing a place in life.

4. Seeing opportunities

Most likely, people who are now less than 15 years old will live a century and a half. Many possible maximum lifespan trajectories. And this is a huge time. Compare, for example, yourself and the average European 120 years ago. How do you like the community of interests? Would his experience repairing a carriage or cleaning a chimney be useful to you? And two cows (by the way, a great value for a villager 120 years ago!) - how do you like this kind of capital, estimate?

What seems valuable to us, today, tomorrow may lose its meaning.

It no longer seems so important to be innocent until marriage. Love to the grave, which was dreamed of by people with an average life expectancy of 50-60 years, will disappear as a concept with a duration of 150. Well, really, where did you get the idea that a person who was interesting to you at 20 will be just as interesting in 80? Can you imagine a pensioner in love with Justin Bieber?

Our children have a huge life span ahead. Is it worth crying over an unhappy first love if you have at least 100 more years ahead, during which you will fall in love a dozen times? Is it worth getting upset about a poorly written chemistry test if chemistry - suddenly you need it - can you study five more times? Should you consider yourself a failure if you didn't go to college or get your dream job?

For a person from the past, who was given only 15–20 years to take off for a career, a year or two delays is a critical period. For a person from the future, the same year or two is a chance to look around and see other perspectives. It is not necessary to rest with a horn in a matter that does not give in. Better to take the time to find what is truly yours.

5. Be able to cooperate with other people

This is one of the most important skills of the future, which the modern school categorically does not teach. After all, what is cooperation? This is when, for example, not one child receives a test, but a group of children with different levels of knowledge and attitudes towards learning: “Here's a task for you guys. You have 20 minutes to think and give a joint solution."

The standard school usually does not accept this approach. Because the teacher thinks, “Come on! What if only one person decides the control, and the others just write it off? And in some ways he is right. On the other hand, problem solving in the adult world is always a group project.

In commercial organizations, no one presents each employee with different versions of the same "control". There, groups are created that receive a certain common task, and then solve it according to the capabilities and abilities of each. One came up with an idea, another wrote it down, the third criticized, the fourth embodied, and the fifth did not seem to have done anything - he just brought tea on time, created an atmosphere for creativity.

Emotional intelligence will become an essential skill for success.

And even if the child does not turn away from the real test according to the old rules, it is possible to develop the skill of cooperation in other, more group lessons. For example, in physical education, instilling in a student: "If a friend won with your emotional support, this is your common victory."

The ability to work in a team - and to work not only as a "question solver", but also to create a creative atmosphere, to give colleagues an emotional response - by 2020 will become one of the most important skills when hiring. And so far no robot can imitate it.