MODERN CAREERS
The neurosis and
hypnosis of education
By Morris Miselowski
T
here is a well-intentioned
neurosis around education that
seeks to justify the educational
outcomes of the previous generation
by imposing the educational
standards, rigours and methodologies
onto the next generation.
In a past world secondary education
most often led to a singular
qualification or vocation. This
employment choice required preemployment education and ongoing
workplace informal and ad hoc
education.
The norm of employment was a single
linear career where the employer
offered tacit certainty of life long
employment and forty years of career
progression at the end of which you
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September 2016
received a golden watch for a job well
done and a pension that took you into
retirement and your new life.
In this world culture and society
required conformity in its future
citizens. It was practical in a more
routine world and society to underpin
education with the foundational
teaching of the three R’s (writing,
arithmetic and reading).
The education system of the past
suited the needs of the past, but in
a future where there is less certainty
and rigour, where we may live to 120
years of age, work into their 80’s,
have 6 distinct careers and 14 jobs in
professions that we do not yet know
of doing tasks we yet can’t imagine
the underpinnings of education,
employment and society will require
innovation and invention.
The hypnosis of the future is that the
workplace and the 9-5 will disappear.
That the need for physical exertion
and work will diminish as mechanical
devices take over humanity’s chores
and that instead people will spend
long hours in idleness and recreation
is not on tomorrow’s radar.
These are falsehoods.
The core of work and society’s need of
it will still remain, but what we need to
do to equip tomorrow’s workforce will
have to evolve.
The workplace of tomorrow will be
global, physical, virtual and digital.
Language and physical location will