Hang with me on this one, OK?
Back in my college days (insert your own dinosaur joke), my wife had a favorite professor/mentor who would frequently say to his students, “We are trying to prepare you for jobs that don’t yet exist”. That was the first time either of us had encountered that perspective, and we have both remembered it.
But that has always been one of the goals of education, hasn’t it? To help prepare students for the future, especially the unexpected nature of that future. This may be more important than ever today. This task can only be accomplished by being general, as well as specific in the training or our youngsters. This is clearly tricky. We must not only prepare students for various specific skills, we must prepare them generally to think, to analyze, to question, to discuss, and therefore to adapt – in their own ways – to environments which may not yet exist. And this adapting may need to be done not only in the workplace, but also in our lives, which is where it gets complicated – for us, and for education!
To reinforce how difficult this can be, let’s revisit some earlier ‘present environments’ from history. Here are three mini-quotes from our past, going back roughly 40, 240, and 2040 years. All three of these quotes either were or still are quite controversial, not only in their own field (technology, politics, religion), but also in our daily lives. The goal is NOT to fan the controversy, but to reinforce the nebulous nature of change and how we deal with it.
Quote 1: 1977. From Ken Olsen, founder of a mini-computer company DEC: “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.”
Quote 2: 1789. From George Washington’s First Inaugural Address: “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined . . .”
Quote 3: Roughly 65 AD. Taken from 1 Peter 3 (New Living Translation): “In the same way, you wives must accept the authority of your husbands.”
Note also in passing, that all three of these statements are literally accurate quotes (depending on biblical translation), but all three are taken out of a larger context and generally misleading in their shorter forms.
The first quote has rapidly become humorous in the four decades since it was made, which is an indication of how rapidly technology has changed and adapted for us. The other two are still highly (and hotly) debated, which is partly how it should be, and partly why they’ve been chosen.
In general, change is an inescapable fact of life. And we know this intellectually. But sometimes, when change affects what we view as our beliefs and/or our values, it’s harder to deal with. Can we still dispassionately step back and objectively examine how/if we choose to deal with changing times when it becomes personal and/or controversial? Can we use change itself to either reinforce or alter our own views? Can we teach that to students?
Please note this discussion is NOT to argue a position in either of the last two quotes! We all continue to be entitled to our own opinions in these two arenas, and to discuss them civilly. (Indeed, the ability to discuss them civilly is part of that educational preparation for the future.)
Instead, the point is to demonstrate the even-more-difficult nature of one of education’s ongoing goals. In the slightly-edited words of our former professor: “We are trying to prepare you for jobs (and worlds!) that yet don’t exist”.
Comments are closed