Future jobs are likely to pair computer intelligence with creative skills.  Things have changed in the essential skills needed by future employers and society.  The dilemma for educators is now that routine cognitive skills – skills that are easiest to teach and easiest to test (the skills which have been traditionally taught for 19th and 20th Century  careers)– are also exactly the kind of skills that are easiest to digitise, automate and outsource.  * Andreas Schlecher OECD/PISA Programme

Retooling the historical educational curriculum will be an uphill battle. Society resists change but, ironically, readily adopts technological innovation.  The lag between development and adoption of new and very different skills sets  and the  timely necessity of society to become trained and available as a relevant new workforce, will strain educational systems, and leave much of the population ill-equipped to qualify for newly evolving careers.  New academic models, retooling curriculum, and a reassessment of the whole idea of what being educated means, will strain the capacity of educators and academic institutions,  breaking some and driving others to experiment. And out of this disruption will eventually evolve new curricular models designed to constantly adapt to keep up with the exponential  changes driven by technologies and societies metamorphosis.

The near future will see a wrenching, dynamic debate and significant disruption in the form and substance of “education”.  It will take a broad social vision and then the shared sense of common purpose to engender the energy and political will to create this change.  To resist this change, to not recognize the imperative to move thoughtfully but also quickly,  threatens the balance  and stability of the economic, social and political  order of America and its foundational democratic vision and its leadership in the World.