Kushal Pokharel

Pedagogical shift from technical skills to core life skills continues to occupy greater currency in the global education policy debate lately. Universities have started focusing on developing transferable communication skills and generic work skills generally. However, it is difficult to locate the consistency of this trend across the globe. While the Global North is definitely a step ahead in such contemplation, serious policy discussions are taking place in the Global South also of late. The growing uncertainties and constantly changing socio-economic and cultural phenomenon have bitterly exposed the limits of technical skills and competencies. They are the prime focus of the present-day colleges and universities around the world. Unprecedented crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, pre-existing climate and ecological crisis, among others, demand fresh thinking and innovative policy response in sectors like education and health.

AI technologies
Staying relevant in the world characterised by rapid pace of technological innovation and change appears pretty daunting for humans. To borrow the words of Yuval Noah Harari, a renowned author of the epoch making Home Sapiens including his recent ‘21 Lessons for the 21ist Century’ digital dictatorship backed by the merger of infotech and biotech will push billions of humans out of the world of work making them totally irrelevant. Hence, humans run the risk of becoming obsolete with their hard-earned skills and competencies nurtured over the years owing to excessive technological control. Development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and its steadily rising grip is already making big headlines. Ranging from self-driving vehicles to life-saving medical gear, AI’s predominance is evident. Furthermore, the global AI market size is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 42.2 per cent from 2020 to 2027 from the value of US$ 39.9 billion in 2019 further indicating the profound intervention of AI in every aspects of human life.
Against this backdrop, non-cognitive skills enabling individuals to deal effectively with everyday life challenges, including the psycho-social competencies of resilience, personal agency and self-confidence can come to the rescue of the entire humanity to thrive and live a meaningful life in the world full of uncertainties. Also referred to as ‘life skills’, these skills encompass creative and critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, self-awareness and empathy.
Becoming a subject expert can increasingly be of little relevance to tackle such real-life situation. While this is not to undermine the relative merit of technical expertise, everyday life events suggest that developing soft skills are much more important than other competencies. Insurmountable challenges facing humanity emanating from growing violence and injustice can be effectively dealt only with a right set of attitudes and values. In fact, technical skills often don’t have an answer to some pertinent questions of human misery. How do you handle a situation in which you have lost your property and family members in a catastrophic earthquake or flood? How to cope up with a situation in which you are relentlessly getting rejected for a job? How can we develop a positive mindset amidst chaos and anarchy around us? Will our academic credential and rich professional experience help us come out of this mess?
Perhaps finding alternative solutions within the existing system of education can be the starting point. To promote core life skills, redesigning the curriculum embracing the key components of life skills could prove useful which needs to be backed up by compatible instruction (teaching). This will definitely demand a major overhaul in the existing education management and administration system. With majority of the teachers under the existing system, a product of the conventional education, it seems practically difficult to create a bunch of educated future generation who can prove their worth in the near future.

Stumbling block
Attracting the current generation in teaching and professorship would expedite the process of engaging students in experiential and project-based learning instead of rote learning and memory. Even in the current age of information overload, our education system’s overt focus on cramming information stands as a major stumbling block in preparing a cohort of emotionally intelligent, problem solving and creative thinkers who can thrive in the volatile world after next 30 years or more.
Cultivating a practice of critical and creative thinking, problem solving, self-awareness, among other life skills, has become absolutely urgent. On one hand, there is the risk of being incompatible with the changing need of not only the world of work but also socio-cultural values. On the other hand, finding the relevancy of the rich academic and professional insights for the remaining years of our life calls for some serious self-reflection and commitment to learn and unlearn.

(Pokharel is a social science research faculty. kushalpokharel03@gmail.com)