The world has been changing and evolving constantly as humanity progresses through time, especially throughout the Industrial Revolution and into our current digital age. How humanity has needed to interact with each other and the world around them has evolved – from farming and factory work to more entrepreneurship and technological skills – and therefore education must evolve with it. As was argued in the Most Likely To Succeed film, I agree that the demands of current and future jobs will require problem-solving and teamwork skills that a “traditional” education model does not necessarily include. The top skills employers look are “soft-skills” that are not likely fostered by an educational model that prioritizes knowing facts and the ability to achieve high marks on tests. Given this, I do believe that students would benefit from a reimagined education that more closely resembles that which was discussed in Most Likely to Succeed.

Despite the fact that this is my view, however, the obstacles present in the current system are prohibitive to doing so. While the problem-based learning model shown in the film seems a very effective method of teaching students – although it is by no means new, as it was advocated for by John Dewey almost a century ago – it does not teach students the skills required to thrive in a wholly “academic” environment. Universities currently operate on a very “traditional” model in general, with many professional programs (medicine and dentistry, for example) placing high emphasis on content-heavy standardized test grades for entry. While it could be argued that even these professions require more of the “soft-skills” discussed above than the factual recall that is evaluated by the Medical College Admissions Test and other similar assessments, the process of getting into these schools requires students to be proficient in “traditional” educational skills.

Given this reality, I argue that the reimagining of education must come first from post-secondary systems of education. Although the jobs of this century and beyond will likely require the types of skills developed in the school in the video, many students need to be able to succeed first in universities. As it remains now, the public education system is designed to prepare students for post-secondary education, and a redesign of public education that is not done congruently with universities and colleges will result in a disconnect between what is expected of students in each phase of education. This is not to say that none of these skills can be developed in our current model – the redesigned BC curriculum does allow for a great deal of room to develop these skills in addition to traditional education, which I intend to foster as a future elementary school teach. My argument here, however, presupposes the high value of a university education. This was the path that I took so it is the one I am most familiar with, so I perhaps biased to this perspective. Will the changing types of jobs proposed in the video reduce or nullify the value of “higher” education? Will more students be benefitted from finding alternative paths? It is possible that in time, the case for my position will be moot regardless.