We all know that technology is rapidly changing the world around us, and at an increasingly faster rate. We have seen that to be true in communication technology, medical science, transport, space exploration, manufacturing, earth sciences, computer science, physical science… the list goes on. AI and machine learning are rendering entire sectors of the labor market closed to humans. Helicopter parents across the world worry that they must find a way to “future proof” their children, and ensure they are not trained to do a job that a robot can ultimately steal.
Leaving aside the necessary debate that places the intrinsic value of education against the extrinsic requirement for skilled labor, if one is of the belief (and not everyone is) that education must be aligned with work, to the degree that as teachers our primary goal is to prepare students for their work in the future, then the shape and detail of that future is materially pertinent to how we teach today.
When I think of “Jobs in the Future” my mind races to the scientific: space nutritionists, nanorobotic engineers and AI designers. The truth, I’m afraid, is a lot more mundane. According to the US Department of Labor's estimates, just under 2 million new jobs will be created in the next ten years in the home care and health care sector. In fact personal care aides, registered nurses, home health aides, and medical assistants take up the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 9th spots respectively on the top ten fastest growing jobs list; with cooks, wait-staff and food preparation staff come in at 2nd and 10th with just under 1 million new jobs created in the fast food sector.
The future, it seems, is not so much filled with flying cars and pollution-eating nanorobots as with hordes of the tech-ladened, luxuriating in idleness who no longer want to cook or look after themselves and their families. Somehow I can’t imagine today’s new parents happily signing their child up for a K-12 syllabus rich in burger flipping and nursing.
So where is the middle-ground?
What do we know for sure about what the future will demand of our graduates?
To paraphrase Oprah, here are a couple of things that I “know for sure” about the future of work:
The future is not a terrain rational people want to be definitive about; however it behoves us to to cast our eye, every now and again, to the horizon to try and establish precisely where we are going. If you made it to the end of the blog without clicking a link, then I encourage you to at least watch this TEDx talk “Will automation take away all our jobs?” by economist David Autor, which is at once edifying and encouraging.
Feel free to tackle me about my future proofing opinions in the comment section below!