Less is more: education for uncertain times

Abstract

How are children to prepare for an era in which work can be outsourced anywhere in the world, university graduates compete with computers and robots for jobs, and in which any number of other, unforeseeable social and economic trends may transpire? Popular discourses on educational reform talk of the need for schools and colleges to produce more flexible, creative, and analytic learners through ‘forward-looking’ diversification of the curriculum and technology use. In this article I argue that schools should in effect do less: Fundamental competences such as literacy and numeracy, and engagement with history, ideas, and the arts ought to be the goals of primary and secondary education. Elective classes in high school should offer more specialised, elective courses. A sufficiently motivated and capable minority can pursue such interests in higher education, but for the majority there should be no shame in departing formal education for the ‘real’ world much sooner.