Change is on the way
September 24, 2023 by Eric Bradley
As more and more unskilled labor jobs are threatened by automation,
educators must brace for impact. While you may be thinking this
development won't affect you, think again! Consider how much extra
pressure will be on you to ensure your students are fully
successful. Their entire fate rests on how well you teach and advise
them. Parents are willing to pay for a premium education only because
they believe it has value and necessity. Once that belief falters,
so too will their willingness to pay up.
Luckily it's not all doom and gloom ahead. Thailand is fortunate to
have a robust tourism sector which is about to enter a boom phase,
leading to a rise in tourism-related jobs. The other side of the
coin is Thailand's other major employer of low skilled and unskilled
workers is the manufacturing industry, and that industry will be a
prime target for automation.
Factory robots waiting to start work for the day.
What we can do?
The antidote to this problem is for schools to focus more on
providing quality in technology education. This will be necessary
because all those robots coming in to replace manual workers will
need to be serviced and maintained. This is in addition to all the
other important technology jobs that will still need human
intelligence to complete, even if artificial intelligence is
available to assist in the process.
Survey data indicates many students may actually have more skill and
knowledge of technology than the teachers assigned to teach
them1. Does this mean you need to brush up on your tech
skills? Not necessarily.
A better strategy is to make use of the technology available to you
for the purpose of guiding students toward solutions. In this way,
instead of you having to teach a topic you may not
be fully confident to teach, you are instead recruiting an entire
network of websites, online videos, and code pens to help with the
task.