How Can We Prepare Children for a Future Filled with Uncertainty?
A Summary of the Keystone 10th Anniversary Education Salon with Dr. Yong Zhao
What does the future hold? Although many potential answers exist to this oft-pondered question, the age of technological innovation has made the future all the more difficult to predict. Although we may not be able to state with certainty what the future holds, we can prepare children for uncertainty itself. This was exactly the topic of last week’s 10th Anniversary Education Salon, at which Dr. Yong Zhao shared his research on education in an uncertain world with the Keystone community.
After a long and agonizing three-year hiatus, Keystone’s renowned event series, Education Salon, has returned. Joining us for this lecture was Dr. Yong Zhao, a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas and a professor in Educational Leadership at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne in Australia. Having published over 100 papers and 40 books, Dr. Zhao is an expert on the personalized education that is needed for students to establish future competencies in a rapidly changing world.
As parents and educators, what sort of tools can we provide for our children in this era of uncertainty? Dr. Zhao explained several important skills students must have to ensure their future success. Firstly, educators must recognize that children are all unique, and that a one-size-fits-all model of education is not enough to empower every individual student to find their own passion. Once students do discover their talent, they need to make it their focus and turn it into an advantage. Finally, we must encourage students to not only be problem-solvers, but to be able to discover problems themselves. Only when schools start to encourage students to understand their own abilities and how they can use them to find problems in the world and solve them, can educators truly prepare students for the age of uncertainty.
When discussing the importance of understanding that each student is diverse in their interests and skills, Dr. Yong Zhao provided an anecdote. As a student, Dr. Zhao was bad at math, which caused him to switch to studying a foreign language – English. If he hadn’t recognized his own abilities, Dr. Zhao may not have gone on to publish so many papers or speak a second language confidently on stage like he did at the Education Salon. It is important for both parents and teachers to recognize that their children may not fit the mold of what they think someone should study. Personalizing learning to match the diversity of different students is critical in a global society.
One benefit to educational approaches that offer a high level of personalization is that students can become more aware of their own abilities and weaknesses. While traditionally, education has sought to bring up students in their shortcomings, in a world of technological innovation students need to be excellent in a certain area to truly stand out. Dr. Zhao pointed to research that has found that the most creative students are often only good at one or two specific subjects. Educators and parents hoping to best prepare their children for the future should encourage children to continue to work on what they are naturally good at and enjoy doing, helping them truly stand out in a world where technology like artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to replace jobs that require less creativity.Once students have found what makes them unique and continued to pursue their passions, the final skill they require to succeed is the ability to discover problems. Traditional education has long focused on problem-solving skills. While these tools are still important, in an uncertain future students will not often simply be handed problems to solve. Instead, students need to know how to find problems in society, so they can go on to create solutions. To truly make a difference in the world, we must first know how to find problems before we can solve them. This requires a change in how we teach our students. While problem-solving is still important, we also need to teach students to reflect on why they choose certain problems and why they are the best ones to fix them.
All this support we can give to students requires new approaches to education. Although schools are often hesitant to make changes, they can implement programs that encourage student creativity and help students better understand their own skills and passions. “I think the most important thing for any education program is to help every student to know who they are, what you are good at what you are not good at what would you like to do, what problems you can solve and how you can be valuable to other people,” Dr. Zhao summarized during a question and answer session with Keystone Executive Head of School Dr. Emily McCarren. Such an approach gives students meaning in a world filled with uncertainty and prepares them for anything the future might hold.
