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Life Skills for Life & Life-Long Learning in the 21st Century

Writer's picture: SeTs AdminSeTs Admin

Updated: Feb 4

A leading researcher in Biometric technologies stated that:

Biometric Silos

The provided text is an article written by Chris Spencer of SeTs Ryu. The article discusses various aspects of education and learning in the 21st century, emphasizing the need for **interdisciplinary cooperation, breaking down barriers between knowledge systems, and adapting to the changing world**.

Here are some key points covered in the article:

*   **The Importance of Interdisciplinary Cooperation:** The article highlights the need for interdisciplinary cooperation due to the increasing specialization of sciences and the limitations of single technologies.
*   **Breaking Down Barriers:** It emphasizes the need to bridge gaps between knowledge systems, professions, and industries, promoting integration rather than assimilation.
*   **Education as a Cornerstone of Society:** The article states that educating people, especially the young, is essential for a civilized society, along with caring for the old and sick, and burying the dead. It also stresses the importance of diversity and inclusivity for social cohesion.
*   **Democracy and Education:** The article argues that education is crucial for democracies, enabling people to make informed choices, participate in the democratic process, and avoid being "idiots".
*  **The Need for Broad and Functional Education:** It suggests that education should be broad and comprehensive before specialization, and that it needs to be functional and relevant to maintain interest. It criticizes abstract studies for being a pursuit of the "bored of mind and pseudo-intellectual snobs".
*   **Critique of Traditional Education:** The article points out that the education system is flawed, with gaps at various levels and a lack of guidance on how to learn. Traditional universities are criticized for relying on their prestige rather than providing professional teaching help.
*   **The Impact of AI and Automation:** The article discusses job automation and the impact of AI, noting that many coders are becoming redundant, requiring people to adapt and reinvent themselves. It also raises questions about how people will make a living if robots take over many jobs.
*   **Focus on Life Skills:** The article emphasizes the need for teaching life skills, including social skills and teamwork, and that education should help students use their leisure time through hobbies, arts and sports. It also notes that many businesses complain about the lack of teamwork skills in graduates.
*  **Mind and Body Integration:** The text states that body and mind should be treated as a single entity and that the learning process should be cross-functional and inter-disciplinary. It advocates for integrating sports, street arts, and everyday life movements with fitness techniques.
*  **Accelerated Learning:** True accelerated learning involves recognizing prior knowledge and engaging in active learning through "doing" and is a process that must be applied diligently.
*   **Whole Mind Learning:** The article champions 'Whole mind learning' which utilizes all five senses, emotions, and cognitive abilities and promotes prior knowledge recognition.
*  **Flipped Classroom:** The article refers to the concept of a 'flipped classroom' where teachers spend more time reviewing lessons, answering questions and guiding students through exercises, rather than just lecturing.
*   **Lifelong Learning:** The article underscores the need for lifelong learning and continuous knowledge refreshment, with a focus on ongoing activities and social learning.
*  **Importance of Human Intelligence:** The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of human intelligence in a world increasingly influenced by AI.

In summary, the article advocates for a holistic and integrated approach to education that prepares individuals for the complexities of the 21st century by focusing on practical skills, interdisciplinary learning, and life-long learning. The author notes that 'It all begins & ends with human beings'.
Thumbprint of Biometric Silos
"The development of scientific technology in the 20th century has increasingly made sciences more and more specialised. The more science became specialised, technology became more advanced but at the price of limited communication with other fields. The pursuit of depth has come to face a technological limit whereby a single technology cannot solve all the problems in the world and therefore interdisciplinary cooperation with other fields has become inevitable."
Kee-Sam Jeong et, al. (as cited by Eliza Yingzi Du et, al. 2013, p184)

What has this to do with 'We the People's every day life and, what can we do about it?


Watch the short video and take the quiz test. Then listen to the podcast and then read on to find the answers. Quiz answers are at the end of the article for when you have finished reading it.

Article Synopsis

PKR Quiz: Short Answer Questions


PODCAST

Life Skills for the 21st Century

Podcast Timeline


BREAKING DOWN THE BARRIERS AND BRIDGING THE GAPS

It is also our experience that far too many knowledge systems, professions and industries are fragmented with gaping fissures & fractures vertically within them, and horizontally between them. As such, it is a core objective & tenet of any good learning system to try and break down the silos and bridge the gaps between knowledge systems, people and cultures. The EU motto is 'United in Diversity', usually achieved through programmes of integration rather than assimilation.


It has been said that three things are needed to be a civilised society: 1. Look after your old and sick, 2. Bury your dead, 3. Educate your people, especially the young. At least one of the three superpowers does not even bury its dead anymore, and despite their apparent wealth, the other two do not seem much better. In practice, diversity and inclusivity are also essential to any civilised society, let alone democracy and its sustainability. That means age, gender, ethnicity, rich and poor! It’s not about winners and losers, but social cohesion by which the whole society benefits for the greater good. It is by cooperation, coordination and collaboration than humans have succeeded in surviving and prospering in a world of predators physical far more powerful and capable than we are as individuals. It’s understandable to admire such majestic animals for their prowess, but it is not how we as a species have and will prosper. This is precisely why so many old cultures revere animals such as wolves and the wolf pack.


Many governments today are decrying migration in one breath and inviting more in the next because of workforce deficiencies and demographic problems of an aging population and low birth rates. People at the grass roots, the working class tend to ignore the government follow their own policies against migrants by excluding them with whatever the latest excuse is or other hidden/intangible integration barriers, whilst more middle class and liberal people sometimes refuse to comply with government orders that exclude or even hurt migrants. These fractures in consistency of policy application appear in many forms, including within the education sector. All societies need cultural centres with creative studios and learning forums to provide a melting pot for all the social groups & factions to learn, adapt and harmonise at least part way by establishing commonalities and a better understanding and acceptance of any differences.


Governmental hypocrisy, corruption & incompetence undermine democracy whilst, organised crime and external dictators constitute are a direct and constant threat to democracies. Like corporations they are run strictly from the top down, giving them some short-term advantages when competing with other organizations such as democratic countries. However, they have strict social borders and tolerances that although can make them faster to act in some ways, it also makes them more rigid and brittle, prone to break-up when the next ‘wannabe’ gets too big for their boots. Compare this to democracies which are more flexible with fuzzy frontiers that allows them the flexibility to breathe before they act (not so rash and aggressive - usually) and promotes better internal cohesion for increased durability and endurance. Democracy as a theoretical construct bubbles up from the grass roots - a bottom-up approach – of one person one vote, not countless business lobbies buying the peoples representatives favours for extra influence and votes.


Most democracies in the world today lay somewhere between these two ends of the pole, sitting precariously on a slippery sliding scale. If we the people are idiots (no brains/unintelligent), stupid (don’t use the brains & talent we have) or, are just plain uneducated, then democracy will always struggle if not flounder. Education for all is an essential requirement for democracies, not only to ensure that we make the right choices, but that we actually turn up to vote, participate and contribute to the democratic process. Given all the complexities of the modern interconnected world in which we live, that education has to be quite broad and comprehensive before anyone starts to specialise. It also needs to be functional to keep its relevance and interest value for most people. Abstract studies are a sport and hobby for the bored of mind and pseudo-intellectual snobs.

Classic examples in the professions are education and industry which always seem to cooperate in an arse-about-face way, with little means to ensure the content and standard of on-the-job learning acquired, if there is any such scheme at all. The businesses are mostly just interested in cheap labour and maybe a limited head-hunting opportunity. The students themselves are interested as much in the earnings to help them get through the education courses which require a huge investment of time and money in order to earn later on. This also means just getting through it as fast as possible to minimise the potential debts from study loans incurred. The education systems in themselves have gaps at various levels of education with no education for students on how to learn and cope at the various levels. Traditional top universities still talk about reading for a degree, rather than learning and actually teaching the students. They have long relied on their traditional prestige to attract the most capable students who find a way to get by even without professional teaching help. Teaching is a skill and an art, nowadays based on scientific research, that goes way beyond simply lecturing students and then expecting them to read up on the subject for themselves.


The security industry has managers who know little and have no experience at the grass roots security officer level, thinking they are better and above all that. Yet, this is the front-line where all the other operations and technology condense into the sharp focus of enactment in reality. In business terminology, we might say that this is the bottom-line! Even the clients that purchase the security guarding services often denigrate their skills and usefulness, even to the officer’s face. Security officers (95+%) have little understanding of self-defence and even less skill. The managers and their customers give them little or no training beyond basic instruction about the law and its procedural requirements. They pay them even less and give them really shitty shift hours and conditions. Even if they are good at it, does anyone really expect these people to be motivated to do a good job and stay in the job for long if they are treated this way? If you treat people like this and pay peanuts, don't be surprised if you get chimps & chumps!


Other professions such as project, risk and process management are segmented amongst various industries. Even though it is the same principles, work patterns and base skills involved, they manage to create completely separate systems or study and work with their own pretty sticky labels on the top to make it look like something new and innovative. In reality all they have done is reinvent the wheel and then try to claim a patent on it. About 5 to 10 years ago(?), someone did actually try to claim a patent on the wheel!


SKILLS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Job automation as been progressing for many years already, changing or eliminating jobs, from which It staff have until now thought they were immune. The AI Tsunami that is now upon us is making many coders redundant, and they are now scrambling to reinvent themselves through so-called 'Prompt Engineering' or upgrading themselves to Business AI systems engineers, architects or AI Agent experts. The workplace for all this is already overcrowded and with AI robots, the supply by existing service providers is likely to far outstrip demand, making it harder and harder for new competitors to break into the market, not least because of the technical hurdles that have to be surmounted in order to compete with better resourced existing corporations.


"IBL also plays a crucial role in developing students' research skills, such as formulating hypotheses, designing experiments, and analyzing data".

What came around has now finally gone back around and home to roost. Gloating time is over! The fact is that prompt engineering is in most respects a misnomer and is in principle the same process that skilled teachers have always used in their work every day. To get good results from AI you have to break it down and instruct the AI what to do in small discrete steps in an iterative training process. AI can be a good assistant tutor for some subjects such as science & mathematics, but its use completely misses the point when it comes to learning in most other vocational subjects.

Traditional employment paths will be few and the number of people who can find employment in them will be far fewer, which begs the question, what on earth are the rest of us going to do to make a living, and, if we are all unemployed, who is going to buy the products made by the AI robots anyway? We are going to have to find new ways to sustain ourselves and our societies, and, it will require collective thought, action and systematic support.


“Don’t let school interfere with your education!” Mark Twain

School education is also about much more than just technical subject learning. Some people have even suggested that we should now be focused more on educating our children on how to fill their leisure time with hobbies, arts and sports etc. This is a direct reference to the rise of AI and robots in particular taking over manual as well as information processing (office workers) jobs. Social skills through groupwork and social learning are an essential element of school life. In fact, the lack of group and team work capability of modern graduates from university has been one of the biggest and foremost complaints of businesses recruiting graduates.

In my school days, the big issue was about if, how and when to allow the use of calculators in schools and classrooms. Then we have those who believe that film and video is education media of our time, not realising its limitations and therefore how and when to use it effectively. Although these media are ubiquitous today and have their place in the educational process, this philosophy by itself is just another form of POPULISM for the lazy and educationally uneducated. There is however a balance to be had, between learning effectiveness and efficiency and, keeping people interested and motivated to learn and study. It just depends on how we use it and the amount of credit(s) given to it.


"Teaching life skills is an essential part of education, as it equips students with the knowledge and abilities they need to be successful in various aspects of their lives"2.

With the advent of such powerful technologies as AI, with all their potential pitfalls from unfettered use and reckless development, we all need to educate and train ourselves to work at a different level of operations. No more will we be the number crunching and data processing production machines (data clerks). It will be more about work and human process and project management skills, organization structure, workflows and architecture of system stacks, and more besides. It is estimated that about 80% of the workforce is employed by small businesses. The big corporations are already laying off workers, including tens of thousands of coders & other techies from the big tech companies. Clearly many more of us are going to have to become self-employed and entrepreneurial at some point during our working lives. That means that AI will be an essential assistant for getting the work done at an affordable price, without having lots of employees. We will all have to be more generalist in our work skills by making use of AI systems, which will require a constant effort to educate ourselves about non-core skills and stay abreast with current technical developments.


SOUND IN BODY, SOUND IN MIND

Body and mind can no longer be treated as separate entities. They are flipsides and part of the same whole that need to be educated and trained together in collaboration with each other. The learning, like working life will be, must be cross-functional, inter-disciplinary which, means borderless and experiential learning in its fullest & widest sense. Calisthenics is an example of a fitness and strength training style that requires you to learn skills and understand the development steps needed in order to progress. Unlike the basic strength training progressive overload weight-lifting systems, it demands much more understanding of self, physically and mentally along with the technical skills and procedures.


We can take this a step further by integrating sports, street arts and every-day life movements with the fitness techniques by breaking down those movements and skills into discrete development steps. Integrating in them in this way is exactly what traditional martial arts have done for hundreds of years already specifically to save time and make the training more integrated, inclusive and hence as efficient as it is effective. All this requires considerable mental acuity (trains the mind as much as the body) and goes beyond into developing attributes such as patience, concentration, endurance, perseverance and general tenaciousness. i.e. mental strength! It is not just about the technical skills, but the whole character and disposition of the student, 'Mind, Body and Soul!'


This is mirrored by the means or medium of learning, be it Online, Onsite or Hybrid learning in a more blended learning programme. The ability to mix, match and blend these learning formats is essential to achieving truly effective learning and even accelerated learning. Accelerated learning is unfortunately a very misunderstood concept. It derives from the problem that students study a subject really quickly and, then start to rapidly forget it within a week of completely the course. From there one it is merely an accelerating path of knowledge and skill degradation. Where this is the case, then we cannot say that the student learned really fast, or even at all. It is neither effective or accelerated. In principle it is a simple case of 'use it or lose it'. For the learning to be effective, it must be used (processed) both during the course and afterwards. Otherwise, it is no better than some passing entertainment.


"LifeComp is a conceptual and non-prescriptive framework that describes nine competences in three areas (Personal, Social and Learning to Learn)"8.

This is why true accelerated learning seems rather slow at first, because it must establish a state of Prior-Knowledge Recognition first, then include Active Learning based on various physical and emotional experiences, such as 'DOING.' In other words, there are no short-cuts. Learning is a process and job of work that needs to be learned and applied diligently before the required learning can even begin. The experience of most people we have talked to is that school education does not teach students how to learn. Even at university level, where students are basically left to sink or swim by their own devices. They are just churned out with some technical knowledge but, without the skills needed to cope with working-life and apply it. This seems to be left to ad-hoc on the job training programmes provided by employers, if available at all.


Adult learners come to courses with a patchwork of existing knowledge and skills which, means that the full process is not needed for them to attain the current skill sets required. Each can often choose their own learning path to save time, however, if they do not understand the process as a whole and have the skill and discipline to apply it, what are they going to do the next time around when they have no prior knowledge or skills? There is no good reason why many of these applied psychology/business skills cannot be taught and practised (DOING) within the education programmes, used and blended in as part of the assignments and assessment requirements. Blended learning is a concept that has already be around for quite a while and, Mindfulness and Whole Mind learning are two of the more popular buzzwords in recent times.


AS IT IS ABOVE, SO IT IS BELOW (AND VICE-VERSA)

Whole mind learning is about using all the 'five' physical sense that we have, plus emotions and cognitive abilities. When we teach children in particular, the use of physical actions greatly helps augment what is being learned and provides a kinaesthetic memory anchor for what is being learned. Before the advent of reading and writing in general public use, lessons learned were propagated within as part of the local culture through stories (parables) and songs. They may not seem as efficient to many adults today, and may even feel a bit childish, but the fact is they are highly effective methods that extend beyond the song and story into society and culture as a whole through the social interactions they engender and common knowledge they establish. The value added therefore, is far greater than the simple sum of the immediate costs and resources that dictate current education processes in many countries today. In ancient times, these were essential to the community’s survival by providing a library of prior-knowledge about how to survive and live together in that locality. Some would now argue that we need to go 'Back to the Future'!


Today, it is becoming widely recognised that Prior Knowledge Recognition (PKR), is an important part of the pre-cognitive learning process. It links our existing knowledge and experiences to the new knowledge being learned, giving better insights, knowledge integration and linking for easier memory retention and faster skills development. We cannot simply study a course and then move on as if that is the end of it. Modern media systems allow lessons to be recorded in advance in various formats to suit student's preferences or simply augment the learning material. Students can replay them as often as they want to pick up on and understand or the details. Teachers’ time is now best spent in the classroom reviewing these lessons, answering any remaining queries and help the students to do the exercises and games created by the teacher for the purpose.


There are some education businesses been set up in recent times based on this 'Flipped Classroom' concept. However, we need to not only 'Flip the Classroom', but the whole education system. Learning works best when mind and body collaborate. This works best with 'Functional Education & Exercise' programmes where the activity or exercise integrates with or otherwise directly supports an activity be it a hobby, sport or every-day life. Oddly enough, even the principles and patterns of functional fitness & strength exercise can be applied to mental learning, and hence vice-versa. As a set of Mind Skills, they are interrelated.


COLLABORATION WITHOUT TEARS, LEARNING WITHOUT FRONTIERS. IT'S JUST MIND SETS!

The world, technologically and socially, is constantly changing at an ever-faster rate, plus or minus a few periodic accelerations with the Kondratieff cycles that describe the 'Long Waves of social and education reform. We need to continue refreshing our knowledge with life-long learning for life skills.


"Life skills are those competencies which help people in functioning well in their day to day life. Life skills includes some psychosocial skills and abilities that enable human being to take decisions, to think critically, to communicate effectively, to build healthy relationships, to empathize with others and cope with the stress and strain of life in a healthy and productive manner".

One of the best ways to do this is through ongoing activities and social learning where people at all stages of learning and work experience can intermix to get fresh ideas, help and learn from each other. This includes the teachers who need the support and input of both industry representatives and subject matter experts and, the students themselves. In Japanese, the word sensei does not just mean teacher, it means the first born or leader of the group. Teachers lead the study and learning process but, the days of 'The Sage on the Stage' are dead and gone. Learning is now an interactive and iteratively circular process that requires the participation and active contributions of all concerned.


“From HI to AI and back to HI again,
It all begins & ends with human beings.
Back to the Future!”
(SeTs Ryu)

Human Intelligence (HI) rules. Long live HI!



References:

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GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS

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Essay Questions to test yourself with







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