Prepping children for an UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Instead of educators preparing children for the newly emerged AI and machine-learning VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, the burden of nurturing children for the uncertain future has devolved upon parents pitchforked into the new BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible) age

- KIRAN BALIMANE & CYNTHIA JOHN

• In its Future of Jobs Report 2025, the Davos-based World Economic Forum says that 65 percent of children entering primary school today will soon be employed in new vocations that don't yet exist currently.

• A report of the US-based transnational management consultancy McKinsey & Co projects that by 2030, 30 percent of all employment will be automated and 60 percent “significantly altered” by AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools.

• US-based investment bank and financial services multinational Goldman Sachs predicts that 300 million existing jobs are likely to be executed by AI-driven robots by 2045.

• OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) — a club of the world's most industrialised countries — has highlighted that 1.1 billion jobs are likely to be radically transformed by technology in the next decade.

Although such alarmist reports about the future of work have been circulating in esoteric think-tanks and ivory towers of universities for quite some time, for the vast majority of educators — policy formulators, school leaders and teachers — who should be in the vanguard of reframing school and higher education syllabuses and curriculums to address this looming problem, it’s education as usual.

Instead of educators preparing children for the newly emerged AI and machine-learning VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, the burden of nurturing children for an uncertain future has devolved upon parents pitchforked into the new BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible) age. With education institutions taking their own time to come up to speed, prime responsibility to press for education reforms and shape children’s future has devolved upon parents of growing children.