Education and Technology

When education fails to keep pace with technology, the result could be a disaster. The society could be divided into the “educated” and the “lesser educated,” people with “good jobs” and people “without jobs.” Without the proper skills to stay employed, many people will suffer, and when the number of unemployed reaches a critical point, the entire society will fall into chaotic. We already saw this situation happened in many countries in Africa and it begins to spread to others.

To avoid this, a massive change in the education system must be implemented to provide people with up-to-date science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) training to meet the market demands. STEM education requires a new curriculum and training methods. The memorization and cramming to pass tests are no longer valid as students must acquire skills via actual hands-on practices and keep on learning throughout their lives. Unfortunately, “lifelong learning” is a relatively new concept to some education systems where passing tests and getting degrees are still the goals. To be effective, lifelong learning should be taught early to young students by encouraging them to read more, learn more, and ask more questions. All students must learn how to study and how to think critically.

Today with the advance in technologies, automation and robots are taking over many jobs in factories and offices all over the world. Workers regardless of their education levels would lose jobs unless they updated their skills to meet new demands. Since most future works will require “brain work” instead of “muscle work” technology training is urgently needed. For example, programming is no longer a skill for people who work in the technology industry, but an increasing number of other industries such as business, medicine, and even arts is also requiring programming skill. According to U.S. Government study, almost all jobs in the future will require some coding skills. A government representative announced: “All future jobs will require reading, writing, basic mathematics, and programming skills. If you do not know how to code, you may not get a job.”

An industry study also found that in 2015, there were eleven million jobs openings in the U.S. that required coding skills. Half of all programming openings are in industries outside of technology such as Finance, Banking, Stock Trading, Business, Manufacturing and Health Care. As a result, coding has become a “core skill” that can improve workers' chances of employment. For students who do not study technology, this is also a skill that opens the door of opportunity too. Coding skills are defined as knowledge of using a computer and be able to write some instructions on a computer as opposed to using off-the-shelves applications. The programming languages listed including JavaScript and HTML for building websites, AutoCAD programs for graphics engineers, and standard programming languages such as Java, Python, and C++.

Today technology innovation have allowed workers to learn things in new ways. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have helped workers all over the world to learn new skills so they can be employable. But at this time, MOOCs only help people who already have some basic knowledge of computer and good language skills. The issue is most labor workers only have limited language and computer skills, and will not be able to take advantage of MOOCs. Therefore, a basic training program for these workers are needed, and governments must solve this problem quickly because technology education is the main driver for economic growth and will benefit the society.

A few years ago, Singapore government issued a policy that all workers above 25, regardless of their level of education, can receive vouchers that they can use to pay for skill training on any of the 500 skills training approved courses. (Many courses are basic programming and fundamental computer training.) Many Singaporean companies also help created these courses to make sure that their workers have certain skills that they need.

Sources

  • Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University