Learning challenges of modern schools and present day children

The present-day children, 25 years later, will take jobs and replace the present workforce. Will they replace us in the same manner? Will they do the same job in a different process? If they need to do the job in a different process what new skills and applications are required?

The job processes which our parents followed have undergone a sea change. For instance, in those days a teacher will come with a scale or stick and a chalk piece. But today, a teacher needs a lot of IT equipment. Along with classroom teaching students attend online learning. Similarly, many office jobs are done from home. With automated cars even drivers will not be needed in the future. Likewise, many jobs in the future are going to be outsourced.
Outsourcing is strictly based on core capabilities. Is it to save money? Of course, everything is linked to money and budget. But it is not to solely save money.

The emerging world is very complex – complex in relationships, revelations, knowledge base, and processes. As a business owner, I can only focus on core capability that I am able to manage. If I have multiple capabilities I will fail to handle them all because of the complex nature of job execution. So, jobs will become outsourced based on core and non-core capabilities.
Work from home has many benefits for a company. If people work in the office there are such complexities as arrangement for accommodation, international travels, office space, office air-conditioning, vehicles, vehicle safety, vehicles sanitisation, water, and toilet facilities. Hundreds of things are entrusted with me as I try to bring employees to the workstations. Therefore, I would love to keep them at their home. All I need is to buy a computer table and a chair for them to set up their offices at home. With the implementation of an IT software technology the staff can be brought together in a virtual office. So, the present job roles and job processes will be replaced with high technologies and high efficiencies.

Keeping these in mind we need to draw a line back to understand how learning needs to be modified. If we don’t focus there and focus only on the present capabilities needed, then the children may find it very difficult to cope up with national and international standards of job requirements in the future. It is from this angle I think and suggest the need for 21st century learning skills.

Teachers are the knowledge banks. So far, they held the knowledge which they give to the children to be learned. But currently, knowledge is no more a bank of a teacher. So, whose ownership is knowledge today? It is there in the computer. Whatever the teacher is going to teach is available in YouTube and other videos including the most practical way of processing.

In the early years of learning, that is in the primary learning, the child gets the language skills which is the ability to master one or multiple languages for his/her own personal understanding. For sure he/she has to learn his/her mother tongue well, because that carries the feel to the mind better than any foreign language. But, learning the English language and maybe a few more languages that are widely used across the world, in IT systems and non-IT systems, is important as well as it helps to understand the knowledge bank later. The development of the four language skills- reading, writing, speaking, and listening are vital. Along with the development of the language skills, the ability of the numerical basic must be developed which includes addition, subtraction, division, multiplication and percentage. Why do we need this? Because anything we speak about has to be converted into measured language. In addition, the basic ability of differentiation, comparison, and analysis should be developed.

Similarly, students must have a strong knowledge of IT communication systems, hardware, and software.
When the child moves towards the mid high school and secondary section, the teacher becomes only a facilitator – connecting children’s knowledge together and putting the right knowledge in the correct way in a complex situation. In a classroom of 25 children, if the teacher has to ask everyone to ask a question it will need one minute each and 25 minutes. Thus, in the classroom she/he needs multiple intelligence. Using different learning platforms, 25 children can raise multiple questions in a second which can be discussed among the students or between the individual student and the teacher. Thus, the teacher acts as a facilitator. This shift in teaching is the 21st century skill.

Learning facilitates knowledge acquisition. The complexity of multiple knowledge interacting with each other can be realised only in a practical situation, and not even in a lab. In a lab, you focus into one particular process or two processes. In a workshop again a few processes. But in a natural environment, physics, chemistry, biology, math, and language skills all come together. Therefore, practicing knowledge gained through a system facilitated by a teacher has to be experimented in a natural environment. I would like to call it playing the knowledge because all knowledge come to the natural play like mountaineering, swimming, rowing, playing football, or agriculture. For instance, a child plays a game in which he/she has a natural interest. The natural interest comes because the play has a goal and has an involvement of processes. But these two are not found in a classroom. One of the big problems of a classroom is that learning is without a play. Classroom learning is focused only on the goals. And when learning is focussed on the goal, it builds tension because what if you don’t achieve the goal? So, it results in a lot of memorising of lessons to attain the goal. Therefore, it is on to the detailed processes that the real play stands and not in the classroom where learning is for a goal.

Learning should be backed by adequate playing environments where the child uses the knowledge, experiments the knowledge, comes back with a feed back of what he/she learned, and how he/she learned, and what he/she has to learn more. If that blending happens with a strong artificial intelligence platform – to secure it, to communicate it, and to reproduce it – I think modern classrooms can definitely fit a futuristic goal of working environment.
Then what is left behind is only relationship, which is perhaps the most complex matter of classroom learning. Relationships are a huge question in the modern world. Man and woman exist in their own spaces. The laws relating to the personal independence will have to be respected. Relationships have to be connected to the environment as well. What guides our relationships in a home is different from that with a group of friends. These relationships need to be well understood, tested, and experimented in a school in such a way that each child who is tomorrow’s youth is able to build the relationships based on solid values, solid objectives and the legal matters binding relationships. So, children, as they become friends and build relationships, work together and learn to do the same in their workplace when they grow up. These are some of the challenges of modern classrooms that need to be addressed.