"INSIDEPIDP"

Objective

Dumont and Istane (2010) in their book the nature of learning state that

“Our societies and economies have experienced a profound transformation from reliance on an industrial to a knowledge base. Global drivers increasingly bring to the fore what some call “21st century competencies” – including deep understanding, flexibility, and the capacity to make creative connections, a range of so-called “soft-skills” including good team working. The quantity and quality of learning thus become central, with the accompanying concern that traditional educational approaches are insufficient.”

In these lines, Dumont and Istane have emphasized the importance of non-cognitive skills also popularly known as 21st-Ccentury skills.

Non-cognitive skills have been broadly defined as representing the “patterns of thought, feelings and behavior” (Borghans et al. 2008) of individuals that may continue to develop throughout their lives (Bloom 1964).

Reflective

For eight years, I taught in the best Commerce and Management College, in entire North India. I really was fortunate to teach students who have been making a big name for themselves and their institution and teachers over the years. But there has always been a gap in educating them. A gap that was felt by ‘us’ every year. A gap that would sometimes make the best of my students feel incompetent.

When we had companies visiting our campus for recruitment, many of the best scorers would fail to impress them. My students would often come up to us and complain- they don’t ask anything of the skills we know- they just ask about soft-skills. Are they not at all concerned about what geniuses we are in our fields? Their words would often make me think for long hours.

What are we teaching and training students for? Is it not late already that we start addressing this gap.

I felt this gap even more profoundly when I immigrated to Canada.

Wherever I went for a job, I realized they were more concerned about my softs-skills, but the question was how do I prove them? How do I negotiate what qualities I have? They are nowhere written on any of my credentials. All I carried to Canada was my grades and my experience.

Technically I had moved from a modern to a post- modern society but the gap that I had felt earlier seemed to have followed me here.

What is this gap? It is our centuries’ long tradition of concentrating, teaching and honing cognitive skills and content in formal education systems and not concentrating on non-cognitive skills.

The world has changed. We are living in the era of technology where content and knowledge are accessible from every nook and corner of the world and most of it for free. So if information has now become globally available, what is it that can differentiate us from others in our fields? Non-Cognitive skills.

If it’s all so simple and clear then why even after realizing a long time ago the need to hone soft-skills we are still feeling the gap? Gracia (2014) suggested that despite the undisputed role of non-cognitive skills’ in our education and, more broadly, our lives, education analysis and policy have tended to overlook their importance.

Bowles and Gintis (1976) had stated that teachers and employers are looking out for similar characteristics. These include cognitive as well as non-cognitive skills. Heckman & Rubinstein (2001) had stated that “Numerous instances can be cited of people with high IQs who fail to achieve success in life because they lacked self-discipline and of people with low IQs who succeeded by virtue of persistence, reliability, and self-discipline”

There is a lot of research and literature available on the importance of what we call are 21st-century skills and their importance can no longer be undermined. But they are still not a visible part of most curricula around the world. Maybe because they are far more abstract and hard to evaluate.

Our schooling systems, as criticized by Sir Ken Robinson, have been designed as per the needs of the industrial revolution where evaluation and grades are everything. In these changing times I think we need to realize that the importance of a new system is fast emerging. A system that allows and facilitates the development of cognitive as well as non-cognitive.

Educators and institutions have been trying to accommodate and consolidate the development of desired soft-skills among students for a long time but this has never been enough. We need a system where these skills are as important as the other curricula taught in schools.

Probably, each one of us can also make a difference. Taylor in my stroke of insight had talked about how we have become left brained and ignore our right brain which is subjective and feeling. It is that part of our brain that makes us feel connected with the outside world. She had urged all of us to start being less left brained.

Well I have been a researcher on workplace spirituality for the past few years and when I think of traits like connectedness, inner life and feeling of community, I realize how badly we need to stop living a compartmentalized life and value our whole self in everything and at every place.

Interpretive

Soft-skills, as pointed by many, are crucial to be successful in today’s world. I realize that they are skills that are not just essential for survival but for the manifestation of ourselves as human beings. Human beings evolved mentally from apes and become what we are today thinking and communicating beings with an intelligence much higher as compared to any living being on the planet. And then we designed computers and robots, artificial intelligence as we call it.

Scientists over the years have experimented and fantasized creating robots with feelings and emotions (Dhar, 2015). It’s an ironic situation. We are thinking of right-brained machines when we have not been able to give the right value and importance to our right hemisphere. I think it is already too late for us but we really need to realize that like we pride ourselves about being separate from apes, we also need to create and nurture qualities that separate us from machines.

We cannot live or survive one day in these times on a Pentium 1 processor, technology that has nurtured our cognitive skills is inseparable from us and we have long ago adopted it and adopted to it in our models of learning and education. But, we are still struggling to incorporate non-cognitive skills in formal education.

Decisional

In different ways and forms the importance of soft-skills or the 21st-century skills have been brought up and it is time we do something about it. As an educator I realize the importance of these skills. Policy decisions and global incorporation of these skills in the curricula is still a far cry. It is time that we as parents and teachers take charge and help our children develop these skills and traits that would nurture their spirit and help them lead a balanced and wholesome life. I have always stood up against compartmentalization and this is another form of compartmentalized living for me. For wholesome development we need to nurture soft-skills as we nurture the hard ones.

References

Bloom, Benjamin S. (1964). Stability and Change in Human Characteristics: New York: Wiley.

Borghans, Lex, Angela L. Duckworth, James J. Heckman, and Bas ter Weel. (2008).The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits. Journal of Human Resources, vol. 43, no. 4, 972–1059.

Dumont, H., Istance, D. & Benavides, F. (2010) The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice. Paris: OECD.

Heckman, J. J., & Rubinstein, Y. (2001). The importance of noncognitive skills: Lessons from the GED testing program. American Economic Review, 91(2), 145-149. doi: 10.1257/aer.91.2.145

Taylor, J.B. (2008, February 27). My stroke of insight. [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight?language=en

Garcia, E. (2014 December 2). The need to address noncognitive skills in the education policy agenda.7 Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved from http://www.epi.org/publication/the-need-to-address-noncognitive-skills-in-the-education-policy-agenda/

Dhar, M. (2015 March 17). How real-life ai rivals 'chappie': Robots get emotional. Live Science Contributor. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/50158-chappie-real-life-artificial-intelligence.html