Today's children 20 years from now

By Lyman McLallen

By 2037 children today will be young adults and their world will be different from the one we live in to the point of being almost unrecognizable. Inventions yet to be imagined will foster unforeseen changes in their lives but at a faster pace than we are used to with our internet and smartphones.

The snazziest smartphones people can buy now will be useless in ten years and the devices people will buy to replace them will be just as useless in another ten years ― by which time it will be 2037. Few if any cars by that time will be powered by gasoline engines but instead by batteries significantly more powerful, compact and reliable than the most advanced batteries made today. Also, most of the cars on the streets, highways and, yes, airways, will drive and fly themselves.

We can only guess about the work these children will do when they are adults, but we can be certain it will change frequently and they will continually enhance their skills to anticipate the changes.

Almost every day of their lives, they will be learning what they’ll need to know so they can keep up with rapidly advancing technology. They will live and work with devices, tools, robots and nanobots, and no telling what else, about which none of us has any idea. They will have to be lifelong learners just to keep pace.

Though we cannot know what these children will do with their lives, whatever it is, we won’t help them get ready to live and work in that world if we force them to spend any more time right now preparing to take standardized tests.

Yet test preparation is a thriving business in every country of the world and parents spend fortunes subjecting their children to the drudgery of memorizing test questions in the mistaken notion that if they make high scores on college entrance exams their future will be secure. Chasing high scores, however, has never helped children reach their potential, except as being efficient test takers.

If children are forced to sit at their desks long enough and are prodded to memorize trivial and unconnected facts, they will likely score high on specific tests ― something machines can do too but without all the misery and expense.

The hours children are forced to waste cramming for tests rob them of time they could be spending discovering the world on their own. They could put their efforts into craft projects building things from scratch, learning through trial and error and being engaged in what they are doing with their hearts, minds and hands, excited by their own work.

They could cultivate themselves through reading for the deep delight of it and take walks in forested parks, partaking of fresh air and life-enhancing exercise. Using their time productively, they could figure out how to be resourceful and pursue what they’re interested in, not what they’re goaded to memorize.

Still, parents force their children to endure mind-numbing hours preparing for tests mostly because they are afraid they will fall behind others in their lockstep rush toward irrelevance. Unwittingly, these parents are reducing their children’s chances of having real lives.

If humanity is to thrive in the next fifty years and beyond, if your grandchildren and their children have a chance at living worthwhile lives, then you must help your children become the most knowledgeable and capable people who have ever lived. How they will transform themselves into the people they need to be, we don’t know, for nobody has ever been where they will go. Do you imagine, though, they will get there by being forced to cram for high test scores? What must you and the rest of us do to help them?

McLallen has lived in Korea for almost 20 years and has taught at Kyungnam University, Korea University and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. For more than a decade he was a student at the University of Memphis State. He is a copy editor at The Korea Times.