Challenges of student learning 25 years from now

Should we continue with what we are doing today,or should we change the learning methods to suit the challenges 25 years later? Are we teaching to generate children who resemble us in our character, attitude, behaviour and approach, or do we train them to face realities of man’s life 25 years later? Based on the limited experience I have of man’s challenges today, I am trying to think, what would be the challenges 25 years later.

I think the biggest challenges the present generation will encounter when they become the youth of tomorrow shall be the excessive use of machines in the ordinary life. The second challenge shall be the high pressure of working conditions with more machines and less people. What we lose is the happiness of being in eye-to-eye relationship. So, when an eye-to-eye relationship is lost, what could engulf our minds shall be quick anger, impatience, feeling of loneliness, and the demand for everything to happen in no time. The achievement results into anger, frustration, and hatred.

So, 25 years later the best I can predict is a young society working with different kinds of machines and the highest IT technology with a desire to achieve comfortable living immediately, wanting to have satisfaction of needs immediately, driven for money aggressively, and distancing human beings far away. Human beings are electronically available as I repeatedly say, eye-to-eye contacts shall be far way. So this is a very, very difficult situation. Fragmented minds – how people will react nobody knows, when a person will be happy or unhappy, when a person will like you or dislike you, and what a person will do against you in the slightest provocations. Hurtful reactions,mental torture, physical torture, and blackmailing will be very frequent because relationship of one-to-one, eye-to-eye, and self-respect shall be challenged in an emerging society. I am sure that in such a society people will not listen to understand, to ask questions, and to clarify what the other person is speaking. Instead, people will be very anxious to react and reply quickly.

Quick reactions, quick communications, and most of the present-day jobs may be taken over by machines replacing man. Man can either be machine operators or ‘yes or no’ communicators.Only a few would be needed to think and take actions.
In the Indian mythology it is said that in the Kaliyuga — where anger, hatred, and greediness shall prevail over everything — man will tend to do anything for the sake of money, comfort, and personal happiness. And, values shall take a back seat. If these thoughts and predictions are true, then the modern education needs a lot of modification to raise children’s mind to levels in order to safeguard humanity’s peaceful existence.

What are those requirements of education that should build a futuristic society?
The basic values of education which is a non-discriminated way of school learning can never change. In other words, all children are treated alike, in the school, in the classroom, and in the heart of teachers. What binds a non-discriminated learning and teaching is basically love and respect. Give love, give respect, and build self-respect.Love binds children together and the children with the teacher. This aspect of learning shall not be sacrificed for acquiring knowledge.When children are tested or evaluated,they should not be discriminated. Multiple talents and multiple capabilities together can help form a futuristic society. The love of self-respect, patience, understanding, and answering should not be taken out of learning at any cost.

The second factor is collaboration. Collaborating is the only way forward where children work together, learn together, help each other, and are able to share and care. Future relationships will be lost if children do not have the ability to tolerate each other and work together.

Tolerating each other and working together is a serious subject. Today, as the machine related independence come to man, he doesn’t need the help of others. He can manage many things himself. But working with each other is inevitable. As collaboration is necessary, schools should not promote collaboration without individual freedom. So, every child would learn to respect himself/herself, own his/her freedom, understand that his/her freedom has to be united with the freedom of his/her friend as they have to work together.

However, how much of this can be imbibed into a child to be self-independent and learn to collaborate? If this is not taken care of, healthy relationship will be lost, and people will fail to tolerate another person even for an hour. So, the collaboration methodology needs a lot of improvement and schools should always focus on collaboration.

The third thing is critical thinking which should bind learning freedom and learning in collaboration. Critical thinking allows children to explore further. One cannot think unless one has a sharp vision,so schools should always focus in building sharpness of observation.

The next generation children may have to observe and identify problems. A minor issue can lead people to lose money and/orto lose life. So, micro observations on a macro platform should be the basis of critical thinking to save people, their values, and their money.

Let us hope that the next generation is emotionally balanced on impatience, frustrations, and relationship.