teach infinity and beyond

Facebook’s questionable and hyper communicated name change was probably the most commented, since Puff Daddy became P .Diddy or Kanye became Yeezy. Same concept, similar approach, completely different reasons. Meta is the word of the moment and the metaverse a thing to explore in the future. I have already written about the metaverse and I have thought a lot about it, which raised a slightly different question lately:
What should today’s kids learn in school to be able to survive and make a difference in such a metaverse?

Back to basics

I was somehow not surprised to hear that we should, first of all, make sure that every child knows how to read and write, when I was talking to the co-founder and chairman of GetAbstract, a few weeks ago. Of course in the western world, this seems to be obvious, as the majority of children do know how to spell, read and write. As an educator, on the other hand, I can not support the idea that “the majority” would or could ever be enough. We do also know that by 2025 more than 70% of generation alpha will not be from the ”western world”. The generation of a possible metaverse is global and so is our responsability. 

The Learning Worker

We try our best to teach our youngsters hard- as well as soft skills, raising another pedagogical question: Are these just skills kids have learned in school, or do they actually and really know how to apply them autonomously in a world that does not yet exist and that nobody can actually describe? The meaning of education and working in education is trying to find answers to these questions and solutions to problems we can only try to grasp. With social care, education will be the most important sector of the future, I am convinced.
We, the older but not necessarily wiser generation, need to teach children how to be curious in order to learn steadily. Nurturing their own, as well as the other’s curiosity to actually learn and grow their minds.
The world has changed, compared to twenty years ago, where pretty much all the knowledge intake was almost exclusively through written material, today the Internet offers to use other senses as well to accommodate knowledge. 50 years ago, Peter Drucker coined the term of the Knowledge Worker. Today, we know that this is no longer true. Especially for the upcoming Meta-Future we need the Learning Worker. 

A new personality

Whoever I may ask, confirms the fact that the majority of content on the Internet is not relevant knowledge. It is mostly for amusement purposes, news, and clearly designed to maximize clickthrough rates and the collection of your personal data for the respective providers.
It is therefore very important to guide and follow children in the development of their very personal  intellectual capacity to distinguish between what is good for them, what is relevant, what is not relevant and what is actually bad for them as well.

Knowledge, as we know it today, will not be a factor of differentiation, growth or or personal development anymore. We will all have full access to it. We will “know the same”. The fact that children, the adults of the future, are able to make the deliberate choices based on a real and serious system of personal, social, cultural and historical values is crucial and will make the difference. Those choices will be seen as actual personality traits in the metaverse, making us all different and special.