campusreview. com. au policy & reform the way back to about the year 1816. In those days, we used to work a 65-hour week with no holidays, and only two public holidays a year, I think. These days, we don’ t work a 65-hour week. The average is actually down to about 28, because we have almost two months off a year – a month’ s holiday and two weeks of public holidays, because there are 10 of those, and then there are two weeks of sick leave. So for two months a year we don’ t work at all.
Also, about a third of the work force is part-time. So when you look at a lifetime of work, our average week has come down to about 28 hours from 65, and that’ s going to fall down to about 20 hours by the end of the century. So work will not be the drudge that it was for so many of our forebears.
I think the drudgery is going to go out of life too. We’ re outsourcing a lot of the boring things we don’ t like doing at home and work, and that will continue to grow through this century. We’ re going to have more time for thinking, debating, talking, enjoying each other’ s company, travelling and holidays than any generation in history.
Some argue the world is changing faster than ever. How can you prepare for a future that might be different from one year to the next? As we move through the century, we’ re moving into an age where data and information are almost being made into wisdom. And I think that’ s going to alleviate the fear of many things.
The other thing it’ s going to do, certainly by the end of the century, is that almost 90 per cent of the decisions we make each day, consciously or unconsciously, will probably have been mechanised to the extent that it’ s semi-automatic.
Many things are going to change in the way of mini-robots, information and so on. This age of information scares some people a lot, particularly social media, which is a lot of scuttlebutt and fake news, and often very short term and opinionated. But I think we’ re going to see rationality process big data into wisdom and really start to take a lot of fears out of human lives.
The other thing people worry about is whether the robots are going to be more intelligent than humans. Well, of course they will be. But that doesn’ t mean they’ re going to control our lives. It means that it’ s nice to have a very intelligent offsider, whether it’ s in the form of a watch on your wrist, an implant in your skin, or whatever, it’ s going to be very nice to have somebody super intelligent helping you through your life.
That’ s something that is going to slowly take out a lot of the fears that we currently have. It’ s going to get rid of a lot of the old scuttlebutt, fake news and all that sort of rubbish that we’ re plagued with at the moment because of social media and a lot of lying politicians around the world.
Rationality is going to win over what I might call popularism. It’ s going to be quite a battle over the next decade or so, but rationality and wisdom are going to win out in the end, and that’ s going to make our lives a lot better.
What do you think educators can do to prepare today’ s kids for the future? Pedagogists would say that teaching has three elements to it. The first is being a surrogate parent – if you’ re teaching kids who are under 18, of course. The second is being able to pass on information to your students. And the third is what I might call‘ learning to learn’, or tutoring. In other words, teaching students to think through processes so that they become equipped to deal with information in an intelligent way for the rest of their lives.
Now, what’ s happening at the tertiary education level is that surrogacy, of course, is not a role of the teacher. Even information is no longer much of a role for the teacher, because you can get that online and much more up to date than a teacher would normally have in his or her head.
So, perhaps the most important role for a teacher going forward is the mentoring or‘ learning to learn’ element.
That means we’ re going to see a lot of changes, particularly in primary and secondary schools where all research is showing that perhaps the biggest mistake we’ ve ever made in primary and secondary education was to halve the size of schools, going back 30 years ago. That’ s now being realised as perhaps one of the worst mistakes we’ ve ever made, because it tended to lower the status of a teacher because of the lower wages and all those sorts of things. We had to get a lot of teachers who weren’ t necessarily vocationally oriented and certainly not very well paid.
With a school today it’ d be much better to have a class of 45 students broken up into three lots of 15, where 15 are getting their own information off their own computer, another 15 are maybe debating things among themselves, and another 15 are being tutored or whatever by the teacher, so that the teacher doesn’ t become overloaded.
This would enable us to pay our teachers a lot more money than we pay them now.
So the role of a teacher is going to change quite fundamentally for primary and secondary schools going forward.
As for universities, the online revolution is introducing a whole new deal into tertiary education. Again, technology, particularly when it comes to things like the capacity to have virtual classrooms, is why we’ re seeing a revolution take place in universities. And I think the next really exciting cycle in universities is going to start in about 2022. But we’ re not far off seeing perhaps the greatest technological and systems change in university education in perhaps 700 years, so I think it’ s going to be a very exciting period.
Is there anything I’ ve missed that you think is important to include? I would add that, first of all, the nature of employment is changing subtly, but very dramatically, if one looks at it over a longer period of time. For example, we tend to think of the 12.5 million workers in Australia as employees, but I would think that, by about the middle of the century, the term‘ employee’ is not going to be popular.
I think the younger generations will see the word‘ employee’ as carrying almost the last vestige of slavery or serfdom in it, because we are going to slowly move to a workforce where we give far more esteem and credit to the employee by almost treating them as if they’ re their own business, dealing on the business to business basis, rather than on a master-servant basis, which it currently is.
And there are going to be many new advisory bodies to help people who were employees write contracts that look after them fairly in terms of money and conditions.
So, I think there’ s a revolution coming in the nature of work which scares the older generations, like Baby Boomers and the older ones. But the younger ones, particularly the Millennials and the Gen Zs, are going to like it.
In fact, my company worldwide really does treat all of our workers or staff as if they are businesses in their own right, and we try to give them that respect from day one. ■
13