The Question That May Set Your Students Up To Fail

New research from Google DeepMind raises an urgent question for teachers and education leaders in an AI world. Are we teaching children to build their identities around careers that may no longer exist?Last week I was honored to deliver the High Tunstall College of Science annual STEM lecture, and there was something I particularly wanted those students to hear. I wanted them to stop thinking about what they wanted to do. Or at least, to stop treating that question as the most important one. They get asked it at family gatherings, during careers lessons, when they show an interest in something new. We mean well. We're interested in their futures. But it pushes the belief that the answer to who they are ought to be a job.This belief also shows up when we meet someone new. We tend to ask "What do you do?" We rarely stop to consider how much of a person's identity we've wrapped up in those four words.A new essay from researchers at the Google DeepMind Institute examines what work means to us psychologically, and what might happen to that relationship as artificial intelligence transforms employment.Across the US, UK and Denmark, roughly one in five workers say they wouldn't leave their jobs even if they were given their full salary as a basic income. In a recent American poll, two thirds of respondents believed people need jobs to experience purpose and dignity.Now consider how early those beliefs begin to take shape. In the international Drawing the Future study, researchers found that the careers imagined by children as young as seven already closely resembled those being considered by teenagers ten years older.Before they've really had much opportunity to discover the world, children are already developing surprisingly fixed ideas about their place in it. I wonder how much we, as educators, have to do with that.Losing Your Job Means Losing Much MoreWe understand why unemployment is financially devastating. Losing an income can threaten your home, your security...