3 febbraio 2023
In today's article, Dr. Nappo points out that in the face of the uncertainty of what work will be like in the future, there is, however, the certainty of having to change skills and ways of working. Dr. Nappo therefore advocates education whose goal is to train people with flexible minds and high emotional intelligence.
Mental flexibility can be explained as the ability of our brains to adapt our behavior and thinking to new, varied or unexpected situations: in other words, it is the quality of understanding that what we are doing is not working or has stopped proceeding and, therefore, we have to adapt behaviors, thoughts and opinions to adapt to the environment and new situations. The impact that new technologies are having and will have on our societies at all levels is such that we are unable to think about what the world will be like in fifty years, and this is perhaps the first time it has happened in human history.
So no one can actually say today what skills and what qualities and characteristics will be needed and what work will be like in the near future. What is certain is that most people will have to change the way they work and will have to update their skills more than once in the next 10 years. Consequently, the best possible thing to do is to teach students to learn continuously and to be flexible and resilient. Students certainly need skills and the ability to metamorphose. You will study all your life, inevitably, and you will continue to change: so it is crucial to teach how to maintain mental flexibility. This is the most difficult thing because when you are young it is easy to embrace change, but by the time people are 40 or 50, they no longer like change; they want stability, solidity. Mental flexibility plays a considerable role in learning and complex problem solving, because it allows us to select the strategy we need to take and adapt to the different situations we encounter. In addition, it helps to take information from the environment and respond flexibly by adjusting our behavior to the changes and demands of the context. A student with good mental flexibility will be able to adapt quickly to changes or novelties.
The main goal of education must be to train people with flexible minds and high emotional intelligence. The most difficult challenges, then, will be the psychological ones because even if in the happiest of hypotheses many more jobs are created in the next few years than those eliminated by technology, managing this transition for people will not be easy.
