Future Trends – The Future of Education

In this week’s Future Trends – The Future of Education we delve into what the future might look like for education, current space quests and how Universal Basic Income could embolden a new entrepreneurial spirit and thriving future economy.
 
The Future of Education
Take a walk around an elementary school classroom, a high school science lab or a university lecture hall. What’s changed since you were in these places? Is the way in which we deliver education at all these levels advancing as fast as it needs to be to develop formidable future leaders?
The future worker and thus, future student, will need to be a complex problem solver. Highly awarded skill sets of the future will hinge on adaptability, entrepreneurship, communication, data analysis and creativity. The classroom paradigm then needs to shift from one of content to one that encompasses these future fluencies. So how can we help foster these skill sets?

One way is using technology, in particular AI, for greater personalization. Not only do students differ vastly in their skill sets but they also have unique, individual learning styles. In fact, this large scale personalization has already been trialed with positive results.
When the Navy tested their AI tutoring program, Education Dominance,  (which sets out to, “replicate the behaviours of exceptional tutors,” and was used to administer an accelerated version of the Navy’s IT education) with challenges against other students in traditional & eLearning classrooms, it dominated every time.
DreamBox is another learning software that offers personalization at the individual student level. It allows for the fact that every student learns differently and adapts to their specific skill level by continuously learning and assessing throughout coursework.

Evolving technology doesn’t undermine a teacher’s role in the classroom; instead, it augments it. – Brian Greenberg, CEO Silicon Schools

What about teachers? Where is their place in the future classroom? Classrooms today are certainly adopting and adapting to current technologies but we still have a long way to go. Passionate teachers, engaged administrators & informed policy makers have a duty to work together and ensure that we not only take advantage of current tech at our fingertips but also prepare today’s youth for a complex tomorrow.
Rohan Roberts, Author of, “Cosmic Citizens and Moonshot Thinking: Education in the Age of Exponential Technologies,” sees teacher’s roles shifting into that of a guide and counselor. As students utilize technologies to better aid self guidance, teachers’ ability to focus on classroom management and mentorship will be greatly enhanced. Even though the job description may change, the teacher position will still remain vital in the future and perhaps more important than ever.
You can read more about future education at Business Insider.
 
Space Quests 
The world’s richest men & nations continue to push the envelope into space. Is it ego-fueled or is this seemingly competitive atmosphere essential to the advancement of mankind?
On Wednesday Jeff Bezos announced Blue Origins plans for a crewed mission in 2019. Not to be outdone, Elon Musk tweeted, the same day, that SpaceX intends to livestream their moon mission in 2023…in high-definition virtual reality of course.

In case you missed it all seats on SpaceX are now sold out – sold to Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Maezawa is flipping the script and rather than have top Japanese scientists and engineers join him on the trip he’ll be selecting 6-8 artists to, “spread messages of art and peace.” This is a noble sentiment to be sure and we wish him the best of luck in his selections.
Speaking of Japanese space exploration this innovate nation was recently in the news for popping two hopping robots onto asteroid Ryugu. Instead of rolling along like a traditional probe these tiny one kilo ‘bots will hop around; ideal for subverting issues with very low asteroid gravity.
The robots are expected to touch down today or tomorrow so stay tuned on this one. Assuming a successful mission, these bots will return sampled dirt, which scientists will sift through to connect the dots between the role of asteroids in earth’s early development.
 
A Leisurely Future
Finally, what do Darwin, Descartes, Adam Smith and Galileo all have in common – besides the obvious? Their great work was unencumbered by, well, work!
This week the city of Chicago announced it’s looking at universal basic income trials for struggling families. It’s a small sample size of a thousand families with a fairly meager payout of $500 a month but the money goes out with zero conditions and no strings attached. This should act as a fairly honest test of UBI principles.
Universal Basic Income has been trialed and implemented increasingly across a range of cities with varying sample sizes and income allotments. Hamilton is a third of the way through their 3-year experiment which also offers a thousand participants up to $17,000 per year. In the district of Besos in Barcelona, low-income households are granted supplements of 100 to 1676 Euros per month.

Personally, I believe basic income will become the preeminent social policy imperative of the 21st century. – Tom Cooper, Director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction

The current fear of UBI is incentivizing recipients to not participate in the work force. But as we move into the future, would a little less work really be a negative consequence? Hobbies & leisure are important contributors to not only personal health but also overall contribution to society. As mentioned above, some of the most influential people of our time created magic from a life of privilege and leisure.
Additionally, the effect of UBI on labour participation may be overstated by many. In the 1960s and 70s, UBI was studied extensively and found to cause an average 13% drop. This wasn’t nearly as much as predicted and in addition they found households actively devoted more time to child and elder care as well as a decline in high school drop out rates.
Moving forward into a future where ephemeralization holds more and more true, we have to look towards solutions for work/life integration.

Related Articles from Nikolas Badminton:

Future Fridays – The Future of Medicine & Health

Future Of Morality – Should We Program A.I. With Human Values?

Hire Nikolas Badminton, Futurist Speaker