Staring at the end - Education systems and employment

Humans have two skills: Physical. Mental.

Everything we do lays within these sets.
These things are: Malleable. Trainable. Degradable.

I think you know that already.

TL:DR

• Employment is rapidly changing
• Government combine with Industry to create education systems
• Education systems are a ranking system
• They aren't evolving fast enough
• Automation is decreasing work opportunities
• Solutions need to be found now

What happened?

In the past, much of what we did for work incorporated both sets of skills simultaneously as trade person was also entrepreneur, research, development, scientist and cleaner. Job roles were extremely multifaceted and much of one's success relied on adequate ability across all areas required.

As time moved on, we became more specialised and as we narrowed and improved one area, we outsourced other facets to specialists and non-specialists for the simpler (often more physical)tasks. The benefit of this was that we could develop more deeply and through cooperation, go much wider also. This tended to split the physical and mental functions by job.

Soon, there came the industrialisation phase where large corporations gathered groups of specialisations together to satisfy the needs of a product. One idea worked upon in detail by many minds and bodies, with each having a small but pivotal role to play in the finished product and the overall success of the corporation. But no one person had all the skills necessary to perform all tasks of the process. Interdependency.

As more feedback from the was received, it became apparent that it would be more efficient and effective to take the training of minds and bodies into a generalised system that would ensure there was enough quality at the top end and the lower limits were not that low. A worthy cause with many benefits.

The problem with this systematic approach is that it is systematic meaning that it relied on feedback for its development and because of the generalised nature, that feedback had to evaluate all participants equally.

Get in that box.

Quite a complicated challenge if it recognised each person as an individual but this system could not do such. What it had to do was select indicators of success to rank participants across fields and these indicators must be able to be quantified. This meant strict testing of areas where the result required for success was already known.

The fields of testing could have been very wide but having too many would be cumbersome to both train (specialised teachers) and monitor and evaluate for future suitability. What was decided upon were the requirements of industry since this is where the participants were most likely to find themselves working and adding value to the community.

Because the results needed were already known, it became imperative to learn the topics covered in relation to the answers sought. To do so, having a good memory for facts and figures was an advantage within the system and still plays a very large role in how intelligent one is seen as being today.

Over time, the fields of study moved and shifted with the needs of industry but normally the pace of industry outstripped the movement of the institutionalised education systems. This would result in skill gaps that would leave some percentage of the population in a position where their skills did not match the new industrial or societal needs. In the general past, these gaps were often where physical skills were replaced by automation within an industry.

Getting Gains.

For the most part, education systems are run by government and are seen as a long-term investment in the future. The eventual return is employment participation that pays taxes to cover the costs of government, including the education system itself. Some of the most financially successful communities are the ones that invested heavily in education.

This education system is also where most of the world government leaders acquired their pathway. Education systems are vital to communities and people should always remember that often, the most highly positioned in society learned through school lessons information similar to the most lowly placed and the difference between them may have not been enough to warrant the massive position gaps.

Times, they are a changing though. Previously, the job losses in one sector would be assimilated by another and the education system played the trainer to close the gaps. But as said earlier, generally institutions move more slowly than industry and the rate of automation has increased exponentially.

Not only that, but no longer is automation constrained to the physical skillset as more and more each day, it encroaches upon the mental work of humans. This means that job losses that in the past could be absorbed by new mental fields, have nowhere to go as the new fields are increasingly serviced by robots, computer systems and artificial intelligence.

As far as a traditional views of jobs are concerned, we are entering into unknown territory as all of our development appears to be innovating us out of the job market. This is going to have some interesting effects on our lives as it progresses and the job market shrinks enormously.

Getting off-track.

When I train my clients I recommend taking an objective step back, consider where they want to go and investigate if what they are currently doing is going to get them there. Education systems need to do the same.

It is their position in society to prepare us for what is to come. This is not necessarily in our best interest as individuals but for the way the system currently works, this is their task. As said, the Government requires a return on their investment in order to be able to warrant a subsidised education system at all.

However, the return doesn't come easily, it has to first be passed through the filters of industry as it is they who will employ the school leavers. And industry requires its own returns on investments and tax incentives to play the game.

If the Government didn't require a return, schools would run quite differently and probably have more freedom for an individual to discover and develop their own interest areas and talents. These may not help industry as they are currently set up though as they would have difficulty filling the many dull, belittling and degrading jobs that need to be performed, often for very little money, to produce their in demand products.

What I say is best.

So a freewill education system where the massively diverse talents of individuals can flourish, is not in the best interests of society as we know it. Which brings me to a flaw in the 'want to go, where headed' question.

Nearly all school lessons are programmable and replaceable. This means that nearly all that is taught at school can be done by a machine. A big reason for this is that what is taught it, is already known. Remembering facts has already been largely replaced by google search, as has almost everything else. All school math can can be performed by a simple computer and pretty soon, language and translation (just coded sounds) will be performed by computers also. There will be no room in the market for the teachers, let alone their students.

The argument can be made of course that even though computers can do the simpler forms, the experimental development areas of physics and the like are beyond their reach and in order to get to that level of expertise, the school foundations are required. Very good, you get a point.

Yes, strong foundations are needed to build into the unknown however, how many minds are capable of such experimental thinking in physics? How many are interested? How many jobs are there now in this area currently? 7.5 (soon to be 10) billion?

Riddle me this?

Before we go on, let me look at education and its development in the last 20 odd years. I finished high school (year 12) in 1995. Let's pretend to take a random sampling of 100 students from my school that year and look at their math skills and scores. Now, if we took a sample from my school today and looked at their math scores, what do we expect to find 22 years later?

Highschool maths has not changed significantly in 22 years so this should be (in my head) an indicator of the improvements the education system has had in that time. In those years between, there have been massive technological advancements in the internet, mobile technology, ai, virtual reality, understanding of the brain, psychology, pedagogical studies etc. What would be an acceptable level of improvement? How much has the average changed, has the gap between top and bottom closed, are their more high scores?

One thing hasn't changed. It still takes 12 years to complete. So from a time efficiency standpoint, it is lacking.

A new high score!

Imagine a company that had the almost guaranteed resources available year on year at often an increasing rate returning the kinds of numbers education does. Would the results education gets allow it to stay in business? And this is the place that is teaching our children how to improve the future. Perhaps I am just a cynical old man.

So, in the same time that education systems have seen near zero improvement, nearly all of what they teach is now available through a technological solution. Maybe they are not practical to implement across all sectors yet but it won't be long. It wasn't that long ago that self-driving cars were a future technology dream. What will the global job loss be? How many of those drivers can make the move into theoretical physics or coding the new artificial intelligence programs?

Falling short.

Hence, the education sector that is tasked with preparing us for the needs of the future does not seem to be doing a very good job as they seem to be preparing us for the needs of yesterday. And they aren't even doing that much better than they did earlier.

On top of this, schools have increasingly been reducing the not as and non-testable lessons. Art, physical education, home economics, economics. The things that have practical, real world value in navigating life. These things become electives that you can do if you choose but are more hobby based fields. It sometimes seems like they are enabling inactivity and complacency and increasing reliance on others for anything of a practical nature by discouraging agency.

Agency (or a lack of) is an important factor to the school system. The choice is always left up to the pupil of course. Work hard at what we want and have a chance to be part of society or, do what you want and likely be ostracised and in a sub-par social standing.

How many children take option two, and when they do take it, is it because they are making a conscious decision to follow their interest areas that are unsupported by the system or because the way they are does not mesh well with the system, and they have become disillusioned and distanced from it?

Moving on

Looking into the future a little it is not hard to see that especially the low-end jobs where skills are more easily programmable will be the ones to disappear first. In a cruel twist of fate for the people in those sectors, the school systems do not cater for them to advance from there. Even if they had maintained the best scores through school, if the job they fill is programmable, they are in trouble.

Unfortunately, there is not much to be done for them. Well, that is not true, there is not much to be done by using the current system. There is of course plenty of opportunity to make life easier, more fulfilling and rewarding for everyone on this earth. But the systems need to change. All of them in some way.

The last bastions of skill we hold over artificial intelligence is our ability to think outside of what is and what was; and our humanity itself. In order for us to create a world in which we want to live, we are going to have to call upon these areas to evaluate where we are and decide where we are going.

Leaving it up to governments, schools, companies and any other system that is in place removes our agency to be individuals, to grow and prosper by taking advantage of our unique skills and fulfilling our own potential. These groups willingly or not, benefit from uniform societies where people are programmed into predictable patterns of behaviour.

Choices or decisions?

We have been trained to be interdependent on one another which is good for a community in many ways however, the training seems less for improved society and individuals and more for return on investments at the cost of freedom.

If we are taught to be a programmed society, at what point does a computer do it better than us?

There is much more to say around these areas but this is a bit of an insight into some of my perspectives and questions on education and the topic. I have sat and written 2200 words now and I hope that a few of them will raise some questions in yourselves. There are several subtexts running through this piece which are situated from the obvious to the hidden. Some will find this information arbitrary and useless, some will use it to build upon and develop. I personally and as always, have a lot more to say, a lot more question to ask and a hell of a lot more work to do.

This is not School. You have some freewill to do what you want, think what you want, live how you want.

The responsibility is yours, the consequences are ours.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]

I wrote a quick post about AI today and this is a repost from sometime about 10 months ago I would say. I can't find it in the search but I don't think it made much. I wanted to share it again as I think everyone needs to spend some time thinking about their own skillset, education systems, future employment opportunities and what kind of world we are creating. I have cleaned it up a little also.