Why We Need To Ask the Right Questions from Children

In a recent article in the United States-based education media site edCircuit, Farid Gasim, the Founder of Edarabia.com cautioned that the world has become smaller, and our students will require different skills if they are to be successful when they come of age and join the workforce.

Foremost, says Gasim, our children will need to be competitive on a global level. We should be asking ourselves “As educators, what can we do to prepare the next generation, so they can be ready to take on the world?”

Gasim is asking a very important question – one that does not have an easy answer. His question should be something that every education minister, administrator, and educator ask on a consistent basis.

In the United States, we are lagging behind many parts of the world in preparing our students to be global citizens. Recently, I attended the Future of Education Technology education conference that placed a strong emphasis on creating a future where students were prepared to think globally and could receive the skills to not only compete but to successfully collaborate. It has been reported that 65 percent of the jobs in which our children will work does not yet exist. The conference was called The Future of Education Technology Conference, and it brought together around 1000 global education experts and more than 10,000 working educators and administrators for panel discussions and workshops.

I had the opportunity to moderate some of the panels and attend a number of additional discussions. Like Farid Gasim, many of the education experts were asking the right questions. What can we do to prepare our children? What do we want the future to look like? What role should technology play now and in the future? How can we create equitable access to technology? What is the role of leadership? How should changes be funded?6

I was encouraged. Unlike most conferences in the United States, many of the experts were from other parts of the world. It brought a truly global viewpoint and went a long way towards creating an effective vision, a blueprint for the education of our children and even their children.

Let’s all keep asking questions on behalf of our children. I look forward to reading more from Farid Gasim and to attending next year’s Future of Education Technology Conference. If you’d like to attend, it will be held next year in Orlando Florida. If you are going, I’ll hope to see you there. We can continue to ask the questions that will build a robust education system for the future.

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