All change!

It has now been stated many times, as I’m sure we’re all aware, that technological innovations are multiplying and advancing as we enter the 4th Industrial revolution.    Here, in this blog, I’m addressing the question of how we deal with this change, experientially, whether as English language teachers or as students.

Firstly – I kick off with three quotes:

1. “There is nothing permanent, except change. ”  (Heraclitus)

    This quote I’ve cited numerous times throughout my blog articles, as I’ve explored English language teaching practices,  postmodernism, and most recently – the 4th Industrial Revolution. Change is endemic, unavoidable, and inevitable. But….

   2.  “Nobody has a clue ….what the world will look like in five years’ time. And yet, we’re meant to be educating them (children) for it.”   (Sir Ken Robinson)

   This quote is from Sir Ken Robinson’s  famed TEDtalks speech of 2006. And how the world has changed since then! Now, we have a 16/17 year old school girl (Greta Thurnburg) educating the world and world leaders. Now – we see children, or teenagers at least, innovating, filing for patents, setting up companies, and becoming multi-millionaire entrepreneurs… as never before. Which leads to quote number three:

   3. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”   (Nelson Mandela)

    Nelson Mandela, of course, was referring to social change.  Greta Thurnburg too strives to effect social change, in terms of changing environmental practices to save our planet.  Technological change, on the other hand, is the concern for many of today’s up-and-coming geeky whizz kids that are putting us older generation dinosaurs to shame. Fossilized in our old stone-age practices (relatively speaking), we’ll soon become extinct. At least, if we too don’t change.

I’ve not counted (lol!), but thousands upon thousands of books have been written about ‘change’ through the ages. These include sociological, historical, political, philosophical, educational, technological and spiritual treatise. Considering change is part-and-parcel of considering our human condition, whether we take the more teleological western perspective of progressing towards some end goal, or the more oriental, cyclic perspective of life, death, and regeneration, the changing seasons and the revolving cosmos.

When we consider change, by definition we are considering a change from state A to state B.  Educationally (as is my interest as an ELT teacher), we’re asking how to prepare students for that transition to state B. Or, indeed, how they become part of driving that transition to state B.

This is all well-and-good, and part of our daily work, except that when state B arrives, then the transition to state C begins, and onwards to state D … ad infinitum.

Throughout my own personal life-time I have passed through a number of these states. I remember using a slide-rule to perform mathematical calculations, plus a simple pen-and-paper! That’s how they used to be done. I learnt the old imperial methods of measurement before the metric system was introduced in 1970.  Then we had those old tatty school books full of log tables and trigonometry tables (cos, sine, tan etc) that took a while to learn how to use. I remember too being proudly shown our school’s first computer – an enormous machine that took up half a room and hummed as the valves warmed up. Desk top computers, on which we learnt Basic, Fortran and Cobol programming languages came a lot later, and later still the world wide web appeared with increasingly easy-to-use computer interfaces. Now it’s all ‘apps’ downloaded onto mobile phones, with desk tops and lap tops slowly disappearing from view. “All change!”

This brief personal history spans 50 years. During this time I’ve experienced a lot of technological, as well as social, political, environmental and personal change. That’s to be expected. 50 years, after all, is quite a long time. And change has been on-going from A to B to C … incrementally, even imperceptibly.

Was I, or were my peers, prepared for all this change? I don’t just mean ‘educationally’, to respond to the new states as they arrived, but for ‘change’ itself; change per se.  I rephrase the questions as follows.

1. How do we prepare for ‘change’ as it occurs, experientially speaking?

Maybe we don’t wish for change and are quite happy with how things are. Maybe we don’t like change and we resist it, preferring the ‘old, traditional ways’.  But if we miss the boat when change is happening, do we then have to rush to catch up later?  Or are we left behind with less employment potential to offer in the jobs market. How do we feel then?

   2. How do we cope with incessant change, coming at increasing speeds? 

We talk about preparing students to enter the world of the 4th Industrial Revolution with all the technological advances that entails. But once prepared there’s no time for them to rest on laurels for the 5th Industrial revolution will be coming fast on its tail; then the 6th….

The question of preparing for change, particularly these days, is not simply of change from state A to state B. Rather it is a question of being prepared for constant change, coming quickly. Be that incremental or revolutionary, the wheel of change is never at rest. The wheel of change is gathering speed and hurtling along at a pace. It’s a headlong competitive rush to innovate and design; launch, promote, market and sell. Commodification and excess production lead the way. High financial awards await. See here. 

Do we ever now feel that enough-is-enough’; that all this technological change is removing us from our natural environment and community values; that ‘the good ol’ days’ were better; that marketing is influencing society too much to buy all the latest gadgets which we can hardly afford and which the children demand to be ‘in’ with their peers? Or do we just love it all, rushing out to buy the latest products when they appear, then wondering how we ever survived without them?

Within Business English lesson,  in terms of company or industry management practices, the question of ‘change management’ frequently arises. There we see the process of  ‘denial, resistance, dialogue, acceptance, and commitment’ towards any change proposed by management. In other words, change is not automatically accepted. ‘Change’ changes patterns of work, roles and duties. ‘Change’ changes us. It changes ‘who we are’, in the words of Klauss Schwab* in referring to the 4th Industrial Revolution.  No wonder, then, that a degree of grumbling in company ranks can ensue.

‘Change’ implies a leaving behind of the old, of which we are familiar and comfortable, and entering the new.  At work there is generally no ‘rite of passage’ in the anthropological sense with heavily-signified ceremonial procedures. There’s just a mundane, unsignified, adoption and assimilation of new practices and tools-of-the-trade.

For change in ‘social status’, on the contrary, rites-of-passage serve as both experiential and ontological role markers (i.e. personally perceptions of selfhood) – whilst providing evidence to the wider community of change in social status.  Think of bar-Mitzvah’s or weddings as prime examples.

Group acceptance, following adoption of new technological gadgets, fashion items etc., can have social significance – as marketers are so well aware in promoting their brands.  But there is no rite-of-passage, employing ceremonial symbolic acts, to advertise incorporation into any group as a user of such new technologies.  Possession of such items, in itself, serves this function. To have the latest mobile phone is to be a modern, cool, technophile millennial (or now – generation Z) in touch with the modern world of apps. and social-networking. Not to have the latest mobile phone (or not having any mobile phone!) is to be an old, out-of-touch, fuddy-duddy technophobe.

New technologies and technological tools are coming at us thick-and-fast. Staying ‘with it’ is a case of sink-or-swim. So, again we have the question:

‘How do we help students and pupils to prepare and cope with all this incessant change?

Well, considering  ‘the young’, they are remarkably resilient, having grown up in this world of constant technological innovation; especially in this digital age.  As a result, they are far better equipped than the old at coping with all this modern change.

Pop music offers a useful comparison: The rotation of top hits performed by top artists, or bands, on the hit parade is constant.  Fast-and-furious, we might say. Some survive longer on the turntable, whilst the majority fall off into obscurity as quickly as they arose. This is an accepted fact, especially amongst the young in terms of their personal preferences and loyalties, unconcerned about the key role of  marketing. That’s by-the-by.  The young cope with this constant stream of new musical sounds, idols and genres without a moments thought. And such an assortment too!

Back in the nineties I had a young man teach me about all the different musical genres that were popular at the time: Dance, trance, hip-hop, house, acid-house, drum-and-bass… The list went on as the young man explained their differences. But a number of these genres were quite ephemeral. ‘Here today, gone tomorrow’, you might say:  Now discarded, or resting in the CD collections of the greatly diminished number of aficionados.   Times change.  Allegiances change.  All is ephemeral: Postmodernism in action.

So it is with the young in coping with technological change. Or maybe not solely ‘the young’? Questions of selfhood, ontology, ‘being-and-becoming’,  don’t really come into it. You like what you like. When you stop liking – you move on. It’s that simple. ‘Nothing to get hung about’ (The Beatles’).

Ontology and questions of ‘self’ within English language learning I discussed here – in referring to the identity crises/ language blocks that students may go through as they learn to conduct their professional lives in second languages.  Such ‘crises’ can be very real.  But questions of self-hood in this rapidly changing, ephemeral world of the 4th Industrial Revolution, for the moment – remain ‘questions’. Will self-identities too be ephemeral?  And what of cultural identities? Such questions lead us back into postmodern concerns – of which I have written much.

Perhaps our role as educators, especially with the young, is to simply learn from them. They are, after all, more in tune with this modern age than we. This doesn’t mean to stop being educators, but to provide the young (plus adult students) with the resources they need to develop their tastes and interests as they see fit. We, as English language teachers, do not teach innovation. In our own ways, we foster it. We help it grow.  During lessons we enable students to explore their own creativities – in English. This parallels very much the sentiments of Sir Ken Robinson in his TEDtalks speech.

As a business English teacher, my ultimate goal is to aid students’ creativities within their own professional environments.  My role here is in helping students communicate in English. It could be called a side-skill, but it’s a skill many feel impelled to develop in order to improve their functioning in professional environments: A communicative tool aiding inter-national collaboration to explore and push their workplace creativities.

Again, as a musical metaphor, remember every musical resource was put at ‘The Beatles’ disposal back in the 1960s to explore their creativities. And, left to their own devices, what a wealth of superb, timeless, unforgettable music resulted. Stifling exploration by setting agendas concerning how things ‘should be done’ is counter-productive. English language skills are part of our students tool-kits with which they create and engage in business – or will eventually do if now, currently, school children. Assistance & facilitation is our role. So …

“Please, get out of the new way if you can’t lend a hand”. (Bob Dylan)

More and more, within ELT, we consider ourselves as facilitators. ‘Students teach and teachers learn’.  I’ve stated this several times in these blogs before. Through students teaching teachers, we teachers are lending hands to the development of our students’ English language skills:  Skills that are needed for them to perform in the 21st century international market place.

So – we trust them. As teachers to adult professionals we have no other choice. We acknowledge their professionalism and let them get on with it, providing the English language assistance they need and ask for, with support and encouragement. Our guidance comes from giving our students opportunities to bounce their ideas around – in English, whilst also aiding in the development of such soft skills as collaboration, teamwork, listening and empathy. Yes, whilst also developing expression, pronunciation, comprehension, fluidity and precision.

I am not a school teacher but I surmise that the same is true for school children. We give them the support they need, and let them get on with it, interrupting and interfering as little as possible – only when asked. Our guidance, perhaps, comes from seeing the wider picture as gained from our own training and life experience. I hand over here to those more directly in this line of the teaching profession.

That’s how our students cope with all this in-coming change. It’s their world and they’re building it. Trust them and trust the children. They can probably do a better job of designing and developing the world than our generation has done!

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*Klaus Schwab – President and founder of World Economic Forum