I’m not a huge fan of tall buildings. When my wife and I went to New York City about a decade ago with some friends, we did the typical tourist trip to the top of the Empire State Building. My wife and friends went right up to the edge and looked down, marveling at the distance down to the ground. I hung back…basically attached to the walls of the building and went back inside much earlier than they did. I was quite happy to hop back in the elevator and make our way back down to the ground floor. And, while that certainly wasn’t my favorite part of the trip, it is difficult to not marvel at the magnitude and grandiosity of such a skyscraper. My mind boggles at the architectural math and engineering that needed to be done to safely build such a building. Simply incredible.
And for a while, that’s where my wonder stopped with respect to those really tall buildings in NYC. And then, once day I was watching a show with my son on architectural marvels around the globe and a great point was made…our gaze, understandably, moves skyward when we see a skyscraper, but consider what’s going on underneath the ground. Think about the depth and strength of a foundation that is needed to support such a building. It is absolutely immense. Foundations of the tallest buildings in the world may be 100 meters deep or more and weigh over 100,000 tons. And, of course, without these firm foundations, the integrity of anything built above ground is called into question.
And so it is with learning and creativity.
Start with a firm foundation of basic abilities and knowledge and build up from there. But it seems there’s always another professional development to attend and a new tool or gadget to use in the classroom that speaks to the ‘building up’ of knowledge while potentially ignoring the foundation part of learning and building. We want the skyscrapers without investing in the foundation. Strangely enough, it sometimes feels like what is lost in many supposed leaps forward in education is the basics of learning. From a cognitive perspective, we’re being pushed away from what works in order to prepare students for ‘work that doesn’t exist yet.’ Which, if you think about it, doesn’t make any sense at all. If we don’t know of the work our students will be doing when they are out in the workforce, then how can we predict that we’re not preparing them for that unknown world? And how do we know what we should do to prepare them?
I don’t get it.
And the World Economic Forum seems to be in on this sham of a belief. Every few years they post a document titled the Future of Jobs Report which details certain skills that seem to be on the rise in the workforce and a prediction of what skills will be needed more or less in the future. Below is an image from the latest report which predicts skills needed for the 2030 workforce:
There’s a lot going on here, but I want to point out a big inconsistency that just doesn’t logically make sense with what we understand about learning and building a wealth of knowledge. Notice that in quadrant I there is a prediction of creative thinking as a core skill needed in 2030. Great. Yes. Creativity is wonderful and I absolutely agree that more creativity is better than less creativity. So, let’s be creative.
But, if we look in quadrant III, we see that reading, writing, and mathematics are predicted to be ‘out of focus’ in 2030; they are less essential now and not expected to increase in use. Wait…what? How it the world will the ability to read and write and perform mathematical computations be less essential? Is there anything more basic than knowing how to read and write and math? How will students even begin to build upon a basic understanding of subject matter and foundational knowledge if they’re less likely to be able to read and write and math?
And if society seemingly won’t need workers to be literate, how in the world can we expect those same workers to be fulfill the predicted increased need in creativity? You cannot be creative with information you don’t have. There’s got to be some understanding and memory of a topic in order to successfully create from that subject.
Assuming you, dear reader, have no background in building skyscrapers, imagine that you were tasked with building the next tallest building in the world. What would you do? Just be creative. How safe would that building be? I shutter to think of the calamity of it all. Without at least a basic understanding of building sciences, the creativity needed to build just isn’t there.
Now also imagine the disaster of crumbling buildings if, in the race to build the tallest building in the world, architects and engineers ignored the needs of the foundation and solely focused on the building up. Again, tragedy and devastation would reign.
So, it seems the predictions of future skills by the World Economic Forum seem to be at odds with itself and what we know about learning.
I am begging those like the World Economic Forum and other ‘future focused’ companies with a lot of money to throw around, whose influence somewhat trickles down to the expectations of the classroom and new gadgets and professional development, to think about what they’re actually doing and what they might be ignoring in their push to innovate. In order to create workers and citizens who are better able to be critical thinkers and creative, we simply cannot ignore the basics of learning. We must start with a firm foundation and build up from there.
In order to build a taller skyscraper, we must start with the foundation and create up from there.
To create a better workforce, we cannot ignore the foundations of learning…start with the basics and build up from there.
If you’d like more information on topics of memory, attention, and learning strategies to create a more effective classroom…boy do I have the book for you. Okay, so I’m a little biased because I wrote it. : ) It’s called Do I Have Your Attention? Understanding Memory Constraints and Maximizing Learning. If you access this link, you can find more information on the book, endorsements from Dr. John Hattie, Dr. John Sweller, Dr. Dan Willingham, and more, and methods to order in both the US and UK.
I have also presented at many conferences and to many faculties on these topics. If you are interested in collaborating, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can find me on Twitter, Bluesky, or feel free to contact me through my website.
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Feature image by Lukas Kloeppel: https://www.pexels.com/photo/empire-state-building-new-york-466685/