Reflection on “The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of Stones”

Sunday, July 28, 2013 21:00- originally posted on MOC website

This was one of the pithy and insightful remarks from the first Keynote of Building Learning Communities 13 (BLC13) in Boston, Mass, USA. The comment was made by Dr Yong Zhao, Associate Dean for Global Education, University of Oregon.

Dr. Zhao is an internationally known scholar, author and speaker.  He has visited Australia numerous times and in our state has worked with the Australian Science and Maths School. His works focus on the implications of globalization and technology on education.

There were a number of other key themes to BLC13 and I will write on these and their possible implications for MOC over the coming term.  The reason for beginning with Dr Zhao is not simply because he was first (Duh!) but that his talk was so relevant in our current context in Playford.

Dr Zhao contends that the stone age did not end because we ran out of stones, it ended because of seismic technological change and thus human development (the wheel). He believes we are in a similar time in history and there are two major changes we cannot stop –

1. An increasingly globalized community through communication and migration
2. The technology explosion – self evident

The result is that traditional employment that schools have focussed on preparing kids for is fast disappearing as it is either outsourced (to “cheaper” workforces) and/or automated.

Rather than prepare our children and young people for an industrial world that is no longer there we need to prepare our students to be creative for the new entrepeneurship world they are entering.  He argues we can no longer prepare children and young people for a world of industrialised employment as it is not there!

How can we possibly know what the jobs are going to be?  A child in Year 3 now is looking at working until 2070 – could any of us predict the actual employment trends in twenty years let alone fifty. Our children will need to be educated to become the creative generation - to enable them to adapt, solve problems and create this new world.

To describe his talk better than I ever could I have included the sketch-notes done by the amazing Braden Ovenell- Carter (@Braddo)

Finally BLC13 is  big conference and at the end of  one keynote we had to have our picture taken- I have highlighted myself- LOL!