—  Himmat Singh Dhillon is Headmaster of The Lawrence School, Sanawar

Infusion of humanities into all subjects is of critical importance. Study of humanities develops questioning minds, resourcefulness, curiosity, self-reliance, metacognition, and reflection.

Very often one comes across industry leaders bemoaning that students who have done reasonably well at school and gone onto university and completed degree programmes, don’t have the skills required to succeed in the workplace. There is a gap between what is taught in schools and colleges and what is required in 21st century jobs.

Undeniably there is substance in this lament. Especially in India where schools, colleges and universities operate in self-contained environments with little connect with each other. Therefore, as students transition from one stage of the education continuum to the next, a lot of time and effort is wasted in adjusting to new environments. This disconnect has become more pronounced after the Covid-19 pandemic. Learning loss at each stage and the impact of remedial education is yet to be assessed in the new era of digital revolution and online learning. Have education institutions aligned their curricula with the job market’s requirements? Even as you read this, the world of work is evolving and disruptive technologies and Artificial Intelligence are complicating the jobs/employment scenario. Instead of preparing students for traditional jobs and careers with predictable and linear advancement, the onus on teachers is to teach critical thinking and analytical skills that will enable students to excel in jobs of the future, many of which don’t exist today.

Therefore, a critical duty of 21st century teachers is to provide good quality education to prepare students for life after school and college, thereby laying the foundation to seamlessly integrate them into the new world of work. In essence, this entails that the purpose of education is redefined as not merely to enable students to develop competencies in passing examinations, but to prepare them for life itself. In a nutshell, it boils down to equipping students with the knowledge and skills that ready them for the needs of an AI-driven global economy and prevent them from becoming redundant in the ever evolving VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world.

To attain this objective it is essential that we start at the very beginning. Right from the pre-primary stage, there’s a compelling need to adopt active experiential learning that makes use of the school’s entire ecosystem as a teaching resource. This requires that in addition to textbooks, digital resources, formal curricula and other traditional learning material, a school’s entire campus is transformed into a learning lab or ecosystem. For instance, a solar power generation facility on the school campus provides opportunity for teachers to teach students a wide range of subjects — science, technology, biology, geography and history. Ditto if a school has forest or garden topography.

The takeaways can be made all the more relevant by being anchored in a context, as well as experience that learners can relate to. The teacher is a facilitator who creates anticipation in learners and ignites curiosity and excites their imagination. This is followed by activities used to create teachable moments and to present living lessons that learners can reflect upon.

In short, experiential learning requires shifting the paradigm by mindfully moving from theory to practice, abstract to concrete, intangible to tangible and teacher-centric to student-centric pedagogies.

What features of the experiential learning model not only enable students to succeed in contemporary workplaces, but also prepare them to negotiate changes of the 21st century? The answer is rigorous competencies-based curriculums that teach skills that will endure even as the world changes in the blink of an eye. Among them:

• Lifelong learning. In the emerging world where change is the only constant, degrees, qualifications and certifications are not enough. Academic qualifications need to be supplemented by skillsets and competencies that are regularly upskilled and updated.
• Problem solving. The world of work will always need problem solvers. The future belongs to individuals equipped with a wide range of skillsets including life skills such as communication, negotiation and consensus building, to solve difficult problems.
• Collaboration. The future world of work will require teams and groups working together on projects, often oper-ating out of disparate geographies and different domains.

In conclusion, it is more important for teachers to nurture values and develop intangible skills such as continuous learning, empathy, problem solving and collaboration than new advanced technologies. Clearly, there is need to acquire tech capability, but children must be taught to view the world through a lens that is inclusive, pluralistic and above all, humane. The importance of the human element is most critical and can be best achieved through education enriched with learning of the humanities.

The infusion of humanities into all subjects is of critical importance. Study of the humanities develops questioning minds, resourcefulness, curiosity, self-reliance, metacognition, and reflection in addition to high adversity quotient and resilience that will be invaluable assets in the dawning AI age. The humanities foster values and emotional intelligence essential for holistic development not only of individuals, but of humanity as well.