“It’s quite fashionable to say that the education system is broken. It’s not broken. It’s wonderfully constructed. It’s just that we don’t need it anymore. It’s outdated. In the future, no one will pay you for knowledge they can look up”” (Sugata Mitra, TED 2013)
Our Education is OBSOLETE.....
The habitats of our education systems haven’t changed much, neither the habits. We are driven by teachers standing at the chalkboard pouring their knowledge into willing recipients. This model is never going to develop creative, collaborative, innovative graduates. It will create graduates perfectly trained for a world that no longer exists. For the most part, public institutions are too complex and we’re also only at the beginning of the mass labor displacement that’s happening because of the 4IR.
Demographic Trends
By 2050, almost all of the additional people 3.7 billion on the planet will live in emerging economies – notably Asia and Africa. The population of developed economies, which make up the majority of current technology user bases, is expected to change minimally. Today, 2 of the 7 billion people on the planet are below the age of 25, and 90 percent of these young people live in emerging economies. Africa’s young population as a share of the global population is expected to rise from 18% today to 28% by 2040, while the shares of all other regions will decline. In Germany, the median age is 46, In China, it’s 36. In Nigeria, it’s 18. Nigeria’s population is expected to soar from 200m today to 900 million by 2100. 4 in 10 of the world’s population will be African by the end of this century.
A close Review
In the past, the path to prosperity was through industrialization. Economies would keep more of the value chain at home and this would help grow the economy. The first challenge is that the technologies of the 4IR are cut off this path because they make it cheaper and more effective for machines to do unskilled and even skilled jobs which are have historically played a key role. The second challenge is that, even if the 4IR creates new types of jobs which require new set skills such as creativity, and interpersonal skills; the education systems that are supposed to give them the skills they need to participate in the 4IR are largely broken around the world.
We know what happens when you have young people who don’t have agency or opportunity – they try to get to where the opportunities are, they have revolutions against the governments and maybe even corporations, they become more susceptible to extremist ideologies. So, as leaders in education in the country with the third largest number of people under 15 years old in the world, what can we do? We need to consciously create habits and habitats that allow our students to become creative, collaborative, innovative. That will ensure that Nigeria is not left behind in the fourth industrial revolution.
4IR
There seems to be an increasing disconnect between the content-driven education model largely developed in the nineteenth century and today’s skills-based world of work. This is one of the biggest causes for concern. I fear decision makers will be “caught in traditional, linear (and non-disruptive) thinking or too absorbed by immediate concerns to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our future.”
Introducing students at an early age to industry-standard protocols and practice can help to bridge the transition between work and study following graduation. We need to prepare young people to be able to participate in the 4IR. This is THE long term investment we need to be making, and it can’t play out within a political term. Governments, corporations and civil society all must play a role here, and it requires a dramatically different approach. Our traditional notions of classrooms and curriculum will need rethinking. Businesses need to be the pull for employment and should be investing in education well before tertiary education. We need a new business model that goes beyond profit and also takes into account human outcomes.
Trouble brewing?
What does all this mean for the employees of tomorrow? What can education do to change the narrative? What will African leaders do? Where is Nigeria in all this?