The RGB Life Skills

What makes a student future-ready: O-level or GCSE? IB Diploma or A-Level? Academies, Grammar schools, or Faith schools? These issues seem to be the focus of debate about education today.

However, instead of focusing on ‘how’ should education be imparted, isn’t it a lot more important to first  ponder ‘what’ education should be imparted, given the fast changing contours of the 21^st century, when mechanisation, automation, and now robots and AI are changing the very fabric of employment and entrepreneurship? Isn’t it worth wondering if, like the primary colours Red, Green and Blue, which can be mixed to create millions of colours, are there some core skills and competencies, that when learnt, will prepare students to shine, whatever be the shape of things to come?

The 19^th and 20^th century paradigm of stockpiling knowledge, usually in the form of a University degree, that almost guaranteed lifelong employment is no longer viable, and while the focus of formal education is on ‘vertical skills’ like math, science, history, or marketing and finance, people who excel in different fields have an additional set of ‘horizontal skills’ which are often described as 21^st century skills. For example, UNESCO’s report ‘Learning the Treasure Within - Education for the Twenty-first Century’ describes the four pillars of education as – Learning to Know, Learning to Do, Learning to Live Together, and Learning to Be.

Researching, creating online learning content in multiple formats and conducting regular workshops in remote, rural schools in India to impart life skills to make students future-ready has given me the unique opportunity of interacting with many hues of learners and closely observing challenges of education in a multitude of situations, from metropolitan London to hinterland India. Based on the insights gained I think the RGB life skills are:

Yearning to Learn: how to fire up the learner within, remaining curious, taking ownership of own learning, and being able to answer four questions for yourself: What is worth learning? How will you learn it? How will you know you have learnt it well? How will you become better at learning new things?

Learning to Think: deep and independent thinking, critical, creative and computational thinking, being able to formulate insightful questions, pattern recognition, understanding complexity, ability to solve unstructured problems, ability to innovate and judicious decision making.

Learning to Be: understanding the construct of your emotions, ability to rewrite the script that plays inside your head and determines how you interpret and react to life situations, setting goals that go beyond self-interest, deep self-awareness and living a joyful life.

Once you have awareness and clarity about the RGB life skills, you can chart the ‘how’ of the learning journey for yourself, or for your loved ones, not relying just on formal education but also making the most of the tonnes of informal learning experiences now available, many of them online for free.

Get ThinKING!

In the late 18th century, steam led to the First Industrial Revolution; in early 20th Century, electricity led to the Second Industrial Revolution; in late 20th century, ICT led to the Third Industrial Revolution; and now, Blockchain, Big Data, Robots, Drones, Machine Intelligence, Nanotech, Biotech and other technologies are ushering in another new era. If one ingredient, steam, electricity or ICT, so completely changed the global landscape, just imagine the upheaval that could be caused by the combined onslaught of all these emerging technologies.

Widening hiatus between the rich and the poor, massive displacement in the job market, and super opportunities for those who are future-ready, it's all on the cards. As the global contours shift massively, will you become a mere cog, or will you thrive? It will depend on how you think.

The importance of critical thinking – ability to make rational and reasoned judgments, and creative thinking – ability to create something novel that is useful, is already well established. However, to flourish in the world that is now fast emerging, you need to add more dimensions to your thinking ability. These include,

Abstract Thinking: correctly formulating the problem after looking at the big picture and asking insightful questions that lead to pattern recognition and generalisation. This is very different from solving an MBA Case Study where a pre-formulated problem is presented!

Computational Thinking: algorithmically solving problems of scale. This starts with pattern recognition and abstraction so that the problem can be represented in new ways, then breaking the problem into smaller parts, and finally, recasting the problem to solve it in steps (i.e. algorithmically).

Ability to Innovate to Solve Unstructured Problems: the economic, social, political and other issues we face today are not complicated. They are complex! A complicated problem is difficult to solve but it has a unique solution, like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. A complex problem is not only difficult to solve, its solutions are fluid and need constant updating, like forecasting the weather. The challenges we face today – clean energy, poverty, terrorism, climate change, water crisis, financial crisis, health and well-being… are all very complex. Amazing value-creation opportunities lie ahead for people who are keen to tackle ‘wicked’ problems – problems that are difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements.

Evolving the way you think is the only way to navigate and shine in a future that is VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. You need to shape your thinking such that you connect the unconnected dots, and connect the already connected differently. To do this, you need to not only ask why, what and how but also why not, what if and how else.