This evening my wife and I met with those teachers who teach our son at Lindisfarne College, Hawke’s Bay. This meeting occasion rates as the best yet for me. Why ? Because I’m seeing increasing evidence that schools such as this one are re-focusing their deliver of education according to the current and predicted future demands of the workplace.
I firstly picked-up the latest edition of the Lindisfarne College “Rector’s Newsletter” publication, in which the Rector quotes from a Dec 2017 report produced by the internationally known McKinsey Global Institute. The report is titled “Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation”.
This report identifies that schools need to be developing personal skills (communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity) and high levels of educational attainment. This is in anticipation of human capability requirements skewing towards more personal interactions and more advanced levels of cognitive capabilities.
In a nutshell, what this report is communicating is that “human interaction” and “thinking” skills are going to increasingly become valuable/ sought after skills.
And then I had one of the most uplifting experiences this year talking with our son’s English teacher. Guess what the delivery of English as a subject area now mainly concentrates on ? Answer: critical thinking. Specifically students are taught to ask “why” things are as they are, and challenge the status quo in order to derive improved solutions. I could feel my whole being light-up inside as this wonderful English teacher went on to illustrate what the teaching delivery of critical thinking looks like in the classroom. Magnificent !
I shared with him how I encouraged students at the Eastern Institute of Technology last year to question “why” what they determined as being a fact, was indeed a fact. And how to write reports that qualify “what” they are saying with “why” statements (i.e. evidence in support of “what” they assert to be the case/ fact of the matter).
I’m really encouraged by tonight’s parent-teacher meeting. The teaching of highly relevant skills for the current and future workplace environment was clear to see.