Nabin Nepal

‘The formulation of the problem is often more essential than the solution’- Albert Einstein.

Being an educator of a least developed country, my experience in dealing with young adult minds is that I frequently have to answer questions that haven't been adequately explored.
We have now been trying to transit from an economy where most people have low wage earnings to an economy where one expects to get anything more than a minimum wage job, for which one must have some skills, a successful career and the skills for continuous learning.
I would argue that the skills for active and informed citizenship have converged. We have an abundance of knowledge about skills around us but we do not know how to access them. That's only half the problem. The harder part is that the current generation of young people is very differently motivated to learn.

Motivation
The question becomes how do you motivate these people to make them want to achieve excellence in their given fields. This situation calls for reframing of the education-related problems and more professional development. We must rethink and re-imagine how to conceptualise education, teaching and learning to suit the demand of the 21stcentury.
We spend a lot of time being very concerned about the education and upbringing of the kids. But on the other spectrum, a lot of harm is going on due to hovering over very happening, micromanaging every moment and steering their kids towards some small subsets of colleges or careers. This leads the parents to act like child concierges, personal handlers and secretaries at every step of their life causing the child to wither under a high rate of anxiety and depression. Such a phenomenon makes the child deprived to build self-efficacy, which is the fundamental tenant of the human psyche far more important than the self-esteem they get every time they are applauded.

Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is built when one sees that one's action leads to outcomes, not one’s parents’ action on their behalf. The longest longitudinal study of humans ever conducted is recognised as Harvard Grand Study, its finding that professional success in life is much higher with the person who was raised doing the personal chores. Similarly, for a successful career, the child should not be pampered and treated like a bonsai plant rather they should be provided with the opportunity to grow and blossom like a wildflower who can learn to struggle and survive in the growing global condition.
After reading the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, it became clear to me in a way that I hadn't understood before that any job – that can be a white-collar or any other, service doesn't matter is being either offshore or automated and so, I began to worry about what kind of skills our young people need to get and keep a decent job in this new global knowledge economy and are they the same skills they need to be continuous learners, be active and informed citizens. So, I carried out some research which resulted in understanding that the skills are far more diverse than we have been emphasising in schooling in the past and got the knowledge. Some of the survival skills which every young person will need to get and keep a good job to be a successful learner along with an active and informed global citizen are listed below.

Critical thinking and problem-solving skills
The world is shrinking in terms of global marketing. The organisations that provide similar services/products are growing in vast numbers. So, it is very obvious that every organization that is competing nationally or internationally, the ones that compete with them most successfully engage their competent workers in a process of continuous improvement of their product, the process or their service.

Collaboration across networks and leading them by influence
Teamwork doesn't occur so much within the room anymore as it happens across the country and even across the globe. For instance, GOOGLE has recently allowed most of its employees to work from anywhere at any time but as a team. Billions of people residing in different societies have their cultural diversity. Hence, there should be an understanding of different apropos of the mission in different societies, cultural, racial and ethnic diversity and collaborating with them is a great challenge. Moreover, one needs to lead those obstacles and influence the command-and-control structure that has characterised successful businesses and other endeavours.

Agility and Adaptability
Even if a person stays in the same job in the same company, which is not common these days, that job is continuously changing as a clay. Globally recognised companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and many more restructure every single year and each time every employee has to learn new skills that keep entrepreneurship alive.

Effective communication
The main complaint of both employers and educators is alike i.e., the young adults coming out of high school or university cannot communicate effectively.
The first and foremost problem with their writing is their thinking, they cannot analyse and reason. Another half of the problem is that they don’t know how to write with voice. As their thinking is fuzzy which results in fuzzy writing. Also, they are used to sort of turning out papers by rote.

Accessing and analysing information
The amount of information that is available to us is increasing exponentially. The ability not only to do an effective web search but most importantly is to understand what is the most important information, what is critical information from what is trivial and separating the unnecessary information for the future is an indispensable skill.

Curiosity and imagination
To be a good designer, creating creative and imaginative skills becomes increasingly important in the marketplace. We can take the example of its products. Their market demand is due to the imaginative power and the curiosity of the employees and the employer.

Not only the above-mentioned fact, but the future pillars of the world should also be brave of being authentic, surrender the outcomes and be ready to do uncomfortable works. These make them reliable in the field where they work.

(Nepal teaches at a college)