If the world had advanced from the Stone Age to what we live in today in five years, what advice could you give a Stone Age youth, if you were his parent, to prepare him to live in 2023?
I’m not talking about a situation similar to someone living isolated deep in the Amazon today who could possibly know of the modern world out there somewhere, but a parent living in the actual Stone Age, trying to prepare their kids for a world that doesn’t yet exist. A world they can’t possibly imagine.
I suspect that may be the human situation today.
In that case, the best education you can give your kids is how to be adaptable. Anything else will be obsolete before it is used.
This is almost the case with everything I was taught as a youngster. It's only going to get more true.
It’s possible that the next few years will bring changes we can’t even imagine. If so, how can you be ready? How can you help young people be ready? What you would consider a good education might be worse than useless. It's something to at least consider.
If by "how to be adaptable" you mean development of critical thinking skills and "learning how to learn", then we are in agreement.
ReplyDeleteOver my 25+ years of employment, the only skill that mattered was an ability to develop new skills (technical and social) in the absence of tutors and in the presence of hostile peers and managers.
Two degrees in applied physics established my 'analytic' thinking skill, but my 'synthetic' thinking skill (the ability to correlate disparate information, recognize patterns, and infer new relationships) was developed entirely outside normal schools and academia.
At 73 years old, I still thank my father for his willingness to let me stumble rather than provide answers.
Yes, that's what I mean.
DeleteWhen you find your path blocked, someone who isn't adaptable might just sit down and give up if there's no one to rescue them. An adaptable person will see that the situation is different from what they expected, so they'd better find a different way to get where they're going.
I think liberty is the greatest good, so when people try to block my liberty, I look for ways around them. Or to hop over them or tunnel under them. Or trick them into moving out of my way. Whatever it takes.
You wanted to get your job done, so you found ways around those who were blocking that path. Or to deal with new situations you encountered. You adapted as necessary to get what you needed.