#LostGeneration
3 min readJan 29, 2021
I wanted to start this blog post before Covid occurred. My arguments why we are losing a whole generation is because we are facing the following challenges:
- Our education system has not changed since decades. Sir Ken Robinson discussed “Do Schools Kill Creativity” in his TED talk already in 2006 (!) — and yes, I think that this is still true. There is no evidence that all kids are learning best at or before 8:00 in the morning, and that there is a natural segmentation in distinct subjects for 50 minutes each. There are little attempts to have the best technological and infrastructural environments at schools — on the contrary: many schools are banning smartphones instead of integrating them in teaching lessons.
- In 2017 (!) Noriko Arai presented the project Todai Robot in a TED talk. In this project artificial intelligence (AI) managed to pass entry examinations to Japanese universities. AI does the same as ongoing students would do: it searched in Wikipedia, it googled words, and then it wrote a short paper about a topic. AI is even better than humans because the syntax of languages is known, the number of search results is larger and the process speed is much faster than humans can do it.
- Besides AI other technologies will kill many jobs. Big Data together with machine learning will do better prognosis of diseases than doctors and better predictions of anything than experts. Smart Contracts based on blockchain will erode the work of notaries and lawyers, drones and robots together with self driving cars and trucks will eliminate drivers of all types of vehicles, self service super markets will eliminate jobs of cashiers, all routine tasks will be done by bots and software.
And now Covid is the second major trigger for loosing a whole generation:
- Many existing companies are out of business. Restaurants, hotels, passenger services like taxis and airlines, the wellness industries, warehouses, retail business, shops, tourism and travel industry, culture, event & media industry, production companies of all types and sizes. They are all struggling and many of them will not survive, regardless how much money governments are trying to pump into them.
- As a consequence, people are losing their jobs. Many people, many jobs. They will then either try to fight against the younger generation to get new jobs again or they will sit at home needing payments from society. Together with more and more people becoming older and older they will vote for governments supporting them. To be elected politicians will do nothing against them, because they are the majority. The younger generation is the minority. In addition this situation is an innovation killer.
- A whole generation with an education nobody needs has to work hard to pay taxes which will be pumped back into totally outdated systems. This generation is also fighting against a majority of no-changers, retired people, and persons with no chance to get a job.
This is a worldwide problem!
If you have ideas for potential solutions, please share them here!
