Unemployment has long been high on the agenda of governments all round the world. The biggest challenge is how country can make itself competitive and play to its strengths.
Education has a key role in preparing young people for the jobs market. So how can schools and universities ensure that they are offering the courses and experience that employers need in the future?
As someone once said “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” That’s what business wants: a fertile mind that is eager to use information in creative ways.
Learning from other countries’ experience can help, by sharing good practices and seeing where policies have failed. British experience is not perfect: we can all learn from other countries.
Key aspects of the British approach are:
- Education is based on using knowledge not memorising facts. That’s what a Knowledge Economy is all about. The aim of education should be to teach us how to think, rather than what to think.
- The focus is on skills as well as knowledge. The development of a person’s skills: leadership, team work, communications, having impact, these skills are probably more important than the subject studied.
- The choice of subject is based on the student’s interests. If you like a subject you’ll probably be good at it. Parents should not pressurise their children to take up a career path for reasons of history, or the prestige of the family.
- Employers in the UK are more interested in recent experience and evidence of skills rather than the subject a job seeker has studied.
- Universities have close links with business. Universities are commercialising their research and there is a constant dialogue between the education institutions and the private sector.
- Tech Tuesday Event in Amman
The success of this approach was demonstrated last week at Amman’s monthly Tech Tuesday which showcased London’s Tech City: the fastest growing cluster of creative, technical and digital companies in the world. With typical British irony, it used to be called “Silicon Roundabout”. It is now a base for a growing number of start-ups, innovators, entrepreneurs and multi-national companies.
So how can Jordan play to its strengths? The challenge to create jobs for young people is enormous.
The fundamental point is the need for young people to decide for themselves how to prepare for employment. This might mean going for a course that is less prestigious. It might mean doing a science course rather than humanities. And it might mean doing a vocational qualification rather than a degree. And therefore tailoring your skills to meet the demands of the jobs market is the best way to get ahead.
Of course, education is about more than getting a job. An education system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life. It should also create active, committed citizens with values and attitudes that contribute to their society.
Darwin once said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
Employers tend to look for employees who are most capable of adapting to different conditions in an ever changing world. One of the main requirements of a good educational system is the ability to change and adapt to the current needs of the job market, thus a good system depends on providing its students with the ability to understand and implement, rather than just learn. Understanding is the ability to implement what has been taught under variable circumstances, while simple learning is the ability to transfer the knowledge across.
In your blog, you referred to the choice of subject being based on the student’s interests. That is the corner stone of any successful educational system if we consider the fact that every learner has multiple intelligences rather than a single intelligence quotient.
I have written a paper some time ago that summarizes the idea of the “New Learning Environment” and “Multiple Intelligences. I posted it here for public view: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17308352/Paper.pdf
Thanks again for sharing.
Education is very important to grow up our mind and business. The most important thing you have described here is the student’s interest about education. It is very important to have interest in the subjects you have chosen then only one should reach their goal properly.
I had the honor to be in this meeting. It was with great style. Let a person to get creations. And it’s fun to love what we do. It is also interesting to employ our talents to help devise new ideas about the evolution of the economy. I would like to add that I studied, for example, for food production. But under certain conditions in the company I moved to the Assistant Engineer to the laboratory building from an accident with the staff of the laboratory. I like the company I work with them. And to be sure that I do the test in right way. So I start to read the specifications and it is the English language the Britain BC and American ASTM standard and it was so hard for me to read it and to get the method in right way 100%. But Because I care the company offers the highest salary requirement to stay in the laboratory. Now my experience only 10 years, but my position now Director of the Office of the Consulting Engineers under my experiences and am not engineer. And the cooking became just a hobby. We must evolve with the circumstances that surround us and take advantage of our minds in what Actor with the data. To be success and proud in our self. If we do not work what we like. We must to Love what we do. And believe in our selves.
We deeply thank the Ambassador and the sponsoring company