
The Future of Work Is Uncertain, Schools Should Worry Now - sylvainkalache
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/09/27/the-future-of-work-is-uncertain-schools.html
======
slowmovintarget
How about schools not try to prepare compliant workers and instead try to
teach children how to learn and think?

History, art, music, mathematics, science, literature... you know, an
education, not training.

~~~
junkscience2017
This is a popular response whenever the topic of education is brought up...I
hate to trot out the now-hackneyed term "privilege"....but really.

Very few people in society have the privilege of treating education as a route
to becoming cultured. The storied universities you cherish were built by the
rich for the rich, it is only recently that we have determined that the masses
desperately need a grounding in romantic literature. Is it important to you
that your accountant know Chaucer? Does your favorite artist really need to
know chemistry?

In the end you have to feed yourself. I don't want to be responsible for
feeding you and you don't want to be responsible for feeding me. If that means
you learn something applied that is only useful for ten years and requires you
to learn something else useful in the next ten years, so be it.

As it stands, why do people put such an emphasis on what someone studies as an
undergraduate? Personally, I love reading history...read dozens of dense
history books a year, and consider myself a decent self-taught historian. My
degree is not in history. Why does it need to be?

~~~
epalmer
Note that I am a IS staff worker so my perspective is limited but I also have
a recent grad from my school in my family with my oldest daughter.

So some of what I speak of is personal and up close.

I work at a liberal arts university and hear this from faculty: "We don't care
about skills, we care about the ability to learn". The problem is that today's
learners need to be super learners. They need the ability to do divergent
thinking, then need to work collaboratively in teams. Working this way is a
skill. They need to be able to solve a wide body of problems safely where
failure does not impact grades.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_pa...](https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms)

But they don't encourage this sort of learning. And don't even mention the
"skill" word which is considered evil. I hear the 500 year old liberal arts
model woks just fine.

While our business school quietly is working on these skills and the students
are finding great jobs and starting businesses successfully and more all while
the liberal arts side is ignoring the future.

------
briga
Sure jobs are going to disappear, but with each new generation of technology
new jobs are created. My job as a web developer didn't exist 30 years ago, and
who knows, it might not exist any more 30 years from now. Labor markets evolve
as technologies evolve, we just have to teach our children to be adaptable. As
far as retail/service jobs go, I think enough people value human communication
that we're not going to see a total robot takeover in these areas. People are
going to want to go to 'premium' places that employ humans just like people
are willing to pay extra for organic groceries.

~~~
senectus1
Also I have to believe that there is a "robot critical mass" that will top out
fairly quickly.

Robots are expensive, to be able to afford them you need to have customers
that can afford to buy them. They will only be able to afford them if they
have enough work to earn the money to buy them.... I just dont forsee the
"jobs apocalypse" that the dog whistlers seem to fear.

~~~
Eridrus
Robots have high capital costs, but are cheaper than workers in the US. A
single robot is roughly equal to 3 workers since it can operate 24/7 and even
if your humans only cost $5/hr, 3 humans would cost you $30k/yr before you
even get to health insurance or payroll taxes. God forbid you have workers in
Seattle, SF, NYC, etc where you would triple that number again.

~~~
itronitron
i wonder how much companies that own and use robots pay annually to insure
them

------
Zarath
It seems to bizarre to me that of all the potential problems with AI, people
seem to focus on employment. Like seriously, if we create AI good enough to
displace a majority of humans from employment, I feel like we may have other
things to worry about.

~~~
tluyben2
You are probably talking about something else, but the worrying should be
about wealth distribution after the robots (eventually) take over. No more
'normal' employment can and should be seen as a positive for humanity but not
if the production is owned by a handful of people. To me that seems more
dangerous than the chance of Terminators roaming the streets.

~~~
gumby
In a post-scarcity environment where robots do essentially all the work, thus
the marginal cost of goods approaches 0, the point of money will be as a
signalling mechanism (more iPhones and t-shorts, please; less Kale and
paperclips, please) rather than as a reservoir of wealth.

It's not at all clear to me what some weenies will try to use to signify
wealth and status, but it need not be money.

------
lucaspiller
These type of articles always come with stark warnings that in the future many
people won’t have jobs, however if you compare today’s technology versus the
60s and 70s, the data would tend to disagree.

In the US the unemployment rate is now at it’s lowest point for 15 years, and
if it continues to drop like this will be at the lowest for half a century.
What’s going on here, is it just the criteria for unemployment has changed?

[https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-
rate](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate)

~~~
fred_is_fred
Unemployment only measures people looking for work. So anyone who is retired
(we have an aging population) or who has given up looking (for lack of skills,
drug conviction, drug addiction, etc) also don't count. A more interesting
graph is labor force participation.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
But when so much of the change in labor force participation rate is so easily
tracked to aging, why would you make inferences about automation based on
that?

------
epalmer
I wonder if the presence of automated everything, be it through software or AI
or robots is going to be a long cycle self titrating process. If we automate
too much, there will be less money in people's hands to buy goods and services
and so less demand. The problem with this is that the lag time to seeing this
effect is high. Then many people will be impacted.

~~~
yeahsure
Just wanted to point out that people maybe will have less money, but the goods
and services will also be a lot cheaper to produce.

------
justanotherjoe
I see no data to support such a 'disruption'. On a related note why is
everywhere i look it's people freaking out over AI. Even the title of the
article is telling me to start worrying.

