Why should higher-order skills like creativity, critical-thinking, problem-solving and collaboration be mandatorily taught in schools?

In 1750, there were one billion people living on the planet. It took just one hundred and eighty years for the population to double – in 1930, there were two billion people. In 1970 – three billion. We doubled from that number in 1999 – we were sharing the planet with six billion people. Some estimates suggest that we’ll hit nine billion people by 2050. Just imagine, 9 billion people!!
It’s also a well-know fact that today, a person with a professional college degree earns significantly more than a person with a high-school diploma, compared to the same wage gap that existed a few decades ago. Why do you think this wage gap is widening? Experts say that it’s because of the fact that computers are taking over the jobs of humans. Computers have taken over human jobs that involve tasks that can be expressed through a simple “rules-based logic”.  That involves tasks like answering simple questions that customers may have, routing calls and even diagnosing simple medical conditions. So, where are humans needed now?

Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, in their book The New Division of Labor, say that while computers will replace jobs that can be expressed using rules-based logic, the computers will not be able to replace tasks that require expert thinking and complex communications. Let’s take a simple example of a cardiologist. A computer can complement a cardiologist ‘s job by showing him detailed pictures of a patient’s condition but will not be able to diagnose the problem of the patient, especially a complex heart condition. Diagnosing the problem will require the doctor to first get the required information from the patient. Some patients may be less inclined to give out detailed information based on their culture. So, the doctor will have to develop the trust with the patient and then get the information. Only a human can develop this mutual trust with a patient and not a computer. Once the trust is established and the required information has been received by the doctor, he/she will have to put together the diverse pieces of information and make a diagnosis, which will largely depend on his expert knowledge, prior experience and the intuitive reasoning of the cardiologist. The cardiologist will have to recognize patterns across the different pieces of information that he/she has to make a diagnosis on the condition and the critical nature of it. This kind of complex pattern recognition expertise doesn’t exist in computers today and humans will be needed here.
So, skills need to perform expert thinking and complex communication in different areas is what will be needed in the future. This will require more and more people to go out and get college degrees. And of course, deep expertise will require advanced degrees including doctorates.

What does expert thinking and complex communication really mean? An organization called Partnership for 21st Century Skills in USA has broken this down into distinct set of skills that will be needed by students in order to be prepared for the 21st century. They argue that these skills are so important that they need to be part of the core curriculum, just like how we teach reading and math as mandatory skills in schools. Some important skills that students need to possess are as follows:

Critical thinking – people will need to be able to question what they see or hear – and not accept things at face value; Creative thinking – It means they need to be able to think out-of-the-box, to find new solutions to problems they face. They’ll need to be able to collaborate and problem solve.
What’s more, students in school today cannot assume that they’ll have a single career throughout their life time, let alone a single job. Based on the rapidly changing economic circumstances around them, they’ll need to be able to redefine their careers, maybe even multiple times during their lifetime. In order to do this they’ll need to possess skills like flexibility, adaptability, self-direction, initiation and so on.

The urgency of reforming the education system to match the needs of the 21st century is so great that Ken Robinson, an expert in creativity and innovation, calls it the “human resources” crisis and draws a parallel between this crisis and the climate change crisis. He calls for countries all over the world to not just reform their education system but “transform” it and make fundamental changes in it in order to incorporate these needs.

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