Matching training to the 21st century workplace

The tiny Egyptian clover bird lives with the fearsome Nile crocodile, entering its mouth to clean it’s teeth for food and parasites. It is one creature that the croc never tries to crush between its powerful jaws. Sometime back, I remember seeing a cartoon in a HR magazine about inappropriate training, where a penguin trainee is standing on the back of the croc, saying “They said there was dental work to be learnt here.” It was a funny and honest comment on some of the training schemes that young people undergo through government schemes – training that takes no account of the skills of the trainee or the market needs.

As we enter the new academic year for schools, colleges and polytechnics, every institution is aligned to make the most of changing workplace trends and technology, to equip students of today for the future. While the efforts are well-intended, I find that they are not backed by extensive and rigorous research that will help shape the pedagogy of our educational institutions and also attitudes. As an Arab culture, our society still places emphasis on how parents guide their children. Most parents are fixated on the CED formula - civil services, engineering and doctor (medicine). But the world has changed enormously since our times and even my children’s teenage years. I read somewhere that the children entering kindergarten today, will find 50% new kinds of work that does not even exist today. We have seen this even in our time – would you have taken careers in gaming design or fitness or event management seriously for your kids? But parents today have to change their perspective and look at these options also for their children. And so should educational and training institutions and ministries such as the Ministry of Labour – the old order has most definitely given way to the new and unless all the stakeholders are aligned, we cannot make the future of our children a winning one.

(Captain Mahmood Al Mahmood is the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Tribune and the President of the Arab-African Unity Organisation for Relief, Human Rights and Counterterrorism)