Why We Urgently Need to Learn How to Learn
Here’s how it’s done
When Oskar was younger, he couldn’t wait to log in to an online maths game, making sure he never missed one so he could keep advancing from level to level. Online games for school and work run on the school’s internet platform. Gamification is very well-received by students. Through the gamification of learning, students literally learn their subject matter through play.
It is a utopia. Specifically, it is a utopia where learning content is tailored uniquely to the levels of knowledge and ability of each individual student, outlined in my book Digitalismus (Digitalism). Everyone learns differently. Some learn by seeing or hearing, while others want to practice quickly. The learning models and formats are based on individual learning abilities. They are entirely digital.
Educational institutions will need new goals if knowledge becomes outdated more quickly
First of all, I am not an educational researcher, but I have been a digital nerd for more than 25 years. Digitalisation will radically alter our lives in the coming decades. This article should therefore be seen as more food for thought from the digital community. It is an appeal to confront the coming challenges seriously. Our children and grandchildren will likely be working in professions that do not even exist today. The speed and momentum of the digital age will make knowledge become outdated more quickly, which will fundamentally change the goal of educational institutions.
The bestselling author and historian Yuval Noah Harari put it very well in his highly-acclaimed book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century: “Information will be available in abundance”. The most important skill will be the ability to deal with change, to classify it, and to repeatedly reinvent oneself. If we embrace this idea, it is inevitable that we will need a completely different approach to learning in our educational institutions.
I would like to illustrate this once again through reading education. When more and more information is generated and flows to us, it is more important to be able to process it well. With reading techniques such as “speed reading”, one can double or quadruple their reading speed in a few hours without a drop in understanding. I learned it myself and am fully convinced of its effectiveness. Why didn’t I learn this valuable technique at the beginning of my studies or even in class?
Education is crucial for participation in the working world of the future
There are also good reasons why schools and universities today should address the coming changes now rather than wait for tomorrow. As early as 2017, the consulting firm Roland Berger stated why the issue of education will become even more important in the future working world: “we cannot afford to have children from socially disadvantaged families still having worse educational opportunities than those from wealthy classes”. In summary: education determines whether people can participate in the future — or not.
In Germany, we are not yet ready for the digital transformation of our working world and the subsequent consequences for our schools and universities. A special evaluation of the PISA study on digital learning shows that Germany is almost in the last place among the OECD countries in terms of the digital training of teachers. Two other rankings are particularly alarming. Out of 78 participating countries, Germany ranks in 66th in terms of access to online learning platforms for students. The situation looks even more dramatic when we look at access to digital continuing education opportunities for teachers. There, Germany ranks 76th. Although the global coronavirus pandemic has supposedly acted as an “accelerator” for digital learning and homeschooling, the future will show whether we have learned anything from it.
Lifelong learning is a key qualification in the VUCA world
These rankings from the OECD are devastating because continuous training and lifelong learning are the only absolute key qualifications in the future. In the VUCA world (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) it is increasingly critical to dynamically expand one’s knowledge as the environment demands. Therefore, we must learn how to learn throughout our lives, and to do this, we must provide appropriate educational opportunities.
In the future, we can no longer afford to educate a young person for thirteen years in the public education system, and then another five years or more at university or in an apprenticeship, to establish the same way of thinking as their school and vocational colleagues. Those born today, who are yet to attend school, must not be allowed to end up in such a system in the first place.
That even one of the richest men in the world, Jack Ma (founder and chairman of the Chinese online mail-order company Alibaba Group), emphasises the need for new educational approaches is one thing. The fact that he is even retiring from business life as CEO in order to support new educational projects or even to work as a teacher again shows the seriousness of his concern and underlines his priorities.
It is not enough for educational concepts to be courageous, they must also be implemented
In Ma’s opinion (and mine), students must be better equipped for the era of artificial intelligence. Traditional methods of education will no longer be sufficient if humans have to compete with machines for memory and calculation in the future. Therefore, a new educational system would have to convey, above all, creativity, a global perspective, and a sense of responsibility.
Digitalisation has arrived at the centre of our society, with all its opportunities, challenges, and disruptions. In my opinion, however, this also creates the opportunity to change the direction of society. It is clear that new concepts, new guidelines and new skills are needed in order to be able to take action and overcome the many problems. In a lecture on bold visions, I recently noted the wise statement of the American psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner, a noted representative of behaviourism in the United States: “the real question is not whether machines can think, but whether humans do”.
I say we need courageous and modern concepts for the future of education now. And we must implement them consistently so that we learn how to learn.
