Wanderlust: Expat Life & Style in Thailand June / July 2017: The Business Issue | Page 35

Creativity and critical
thinking skills will become
increasingly valuable
and crucial for the future
workforce. These skills must
be at the forefront of all
schools’ curricula.
adulthood. With
the world chang-
ing at such a rapid
pace, how can we
ensure that we are
preparing pupils for
the kind of world they
will encounter when
they graduate? How can
we be sure the education of to-
day is good enough, when we cannot
be sure what tomorrow will look like?
Leading schools are judged on ex-
amination results and this is for very
good reason: Academic results still
open the doors to the world’s leading
universities. Great schools add real val-
ue and ensure that pupils of all abili-
ties make pronounced progress, en-
abling them to reach goals that they
may have thought unreachable. They
also lay strong moral foundations and
create compassionate young people,
who care about the right things. None
of this has changed.
However, schools should be placing
considerable focus on actively teach-
ing entrepreneurship and promot-
ing the spirit of innovation amongst
students, particularly as the rise of ar-
tificial intelligence poses a threat to
many jobs. In the legal profession, for
example, the days of lawyers and para-
legals sifting through high stacks of
documents are all but over. There are
computers that will inevitably do this
process, and many others, causing a
range of jobs to become obsolete.
Any jobs that can be automated
are at risk. This means that creativi-
ty and critical thinking skills will be-
come increasingly valuable and cru-
cial for the future workforce. These
skills must be at the forefront of all
schools’ curricula.
Our focus as educators is becoming
less about content and more about
skill. One of the biggest changes is
that we now live in a society that judg-
es people on what they can do with
their knowledge. Many employers no
longer care
how many
capital cities
pupils can
memorize, nor
how many dig-
its of pi they can
remember. With in-
ternet search engines
at our fingertips, it is no
longer important to memorize
trivia. Companies like Google place
less emphasis on examination results
and more emphasis on job candidates
who can think for themselves.
Employers need people who are
creative thinkers and problem solv-
ers. They need a digital-literate work-
force. It is our job as educators, then,
to make learning relevant. As Judie
Gilbert, a former VP at Google, asserts:
“If there is one thing educators (often)
do not understand is that the world’s
problems cannot be solved within the
tight lines of academic disciplines.”
Essentially, the barriers between
subjects need to be broken down.
Cross and co-curricular opportunities
should be frequent, and projects that
embrace and entwine the knowl-
edge and demands of many disci-
plines are great methods of doing so.
Pupils need to see the connections in
the subjects they study, and learning
should be made relevant and fun. If
there’s one thing that children abso-
lutely need to develop now for the
next stage of our “brave new world,”
it is the ability to constantly learn
and reinvent themselves, just as our
world keeps reinventing itself.
Part of establishing an insatiable ap-
petite for learning is giving opportuni-
ties for pupils to use the theories and
knowledge they have learned in tan-
gible, meaningful situations. But how
does this look in practice? There are
endless opportunities at school, both
within academic and co-curricular
time. For example, when encouraging
Kids & Education
pupils to raise money for charity, they
should take ownership, work in teams
of mixed ages if possible, and set up
and manage the operations as they
would a real business. Alternatively,
they should be encouraged to actually
run a business, an experiment that can
start as young as possible.
We should promote a cross-curric-
ula blending of skills and knowledge,
offering chances to assume different
roles of leadership, and giving pupils
the chance to work in partnership with
the pa rent body, local businesses and
other organizations. Children, more
than ever, should also collaborate with
different types of media, improving
their skills in all forms of communica-
tion, including public speaking.
It would be totally remiss to sug-
gest that there is no place for aca-
demic rigor or developing a hunger
for knowledge. However, the world
around us already treats information
with apathy: It is ubiquitous, like air,
and quite literally ‘in the cloud’. Unlike
Huxley’s novel, no doubt transcribed
onto an early 20 th century typewriter,
the literature of our future is written
in computer code. Some schools start
computer coding from a very early
age and this is great: Speaking many
languages has always been a huge ad-
vantage, but speaking the digital lan-
guage of the future will be essential.
This all sounds very dramatic, so it’s
worth remembering that our children
do still need many of the more tradi-
tional attributes encouraged through
education. They still need a strong
moral compass and a capacity for em-
pathy. They need perseverance and
tenacity, as well as an ability to reflect,
to be honest and to self-regulate.
They need to know what it means
to be a good citizen and a good
friend. These are timeless qualities
that underpin everything that hap-
pens at school, whilst helping us to
shape a future far kinder than Huxley
envisioned.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward is Deputy Head of Prep School at Brighton College Bangkok with
English being his specialist subject. A father of two girls, Edward originally
worked in finance in London before starting his teaching career at Dulwich
College Preparatory School, London.
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