England’s previous Education Minister Lord Kenneth Baker stated that technologies like 3D, artificila intelligence(AI) and robotics should be adapted in education since they are now parts of social and sectoral life. Stressing that we entered a digital phase with the 4th industrial revolution, Baker said that England should bring 3D software, printing techniques, simulation and virtual reality(VR) technologies to the schools as soon as possible.
Lord Baker’s publication of “The Digital Revolution”, a report on the relationship between British education and future employment prospects for young people, comes shortly after the
Bank of England predicted that 15 million UK jobs were under threat due to automation, in the form of driverless vehicles, robots, and more. According to Lord Baker, radical action is needed to ensure that the next generation of working adults is equipped to handle a new era in technology—the “fourth industrial revolution”, one of 3D printers, robots, and artificial intelligence.
As a response to changing technologies, the UK’s future workforce should develop technical expertise in areas such as design and computing, Lord Baker said in the report. These skills, however, should be combined with human traits such as flexibility, empathy, creativity and enterprise. Developing vocational skills at an early age would, naturally, encourage a divide between students pursuing these technical areas and those taking more classically academic subjects such as history, literature, and languages. This division is something which Lord Baker endorses: “We should not go back to a 19th century diet of academic subjects for all,” he said. “We need 21st century education for a 21st century economy.”