The growing army of unemployables

As the world of work becomes more complex and automated there are fewer opportunities to engage in productive employment for people with low levels of literacy.

Some people are not just unemployed, but unemployable. One is six children in the United Kingdom leave school unable to read, write or use mathematics properly. Other OECD countries are in the same boat...

We can help give our kids a great start if we focus on their ability to use language to expand their cognitive powers. If we read our children books, talk about the big issues of the day, explore ideas and play games. But positively.

As the eminent psychologist Lev Vygotsky showed almost a century ago, language plays a pivotal role in our learning and development. We use "inner speech" to learn new skills with the aid of tools, language as conversation to influence or negotiate with others, the symbols of "written speech", signs, psychological methods such as problem solving or relating processes and physical tools which can be as simple as a pen/pencil or as complex as a computer.

A US study by Hart and Risley in 1995 found that by age three, the children of professional parents had a vocabulary of 1000 words and an average IQ of 117, whereas the children whose parents survived on welfare had a vocabulary of 525 words and an average IQ of 79. They also found that by age three the children of professionals had participated in 400,000 positive interactions and 80,000 negative ones. Welfare children were exposed to the opposite treatment; 75,000 encouragements and 200,000 discouragements. One leads to success in life, the other to a life of deprivation and in some instances crime.

If these young children then go to school, and are expected to sit quietly through 10 to 12 years of lessons dominated by teacher talk and algorithmic learning, then the opportunities to develop rich cognitive capabilities via dynamic language exchanges are reduced even further.

What can we do about it? Here's a workshop method to start over:

1. What gets in the way of 21st Century young people becoming the best they can possibly be?
2. What new roles can parents/schools/child care centers play in the development of young children so they have numerous opportunities to develop the language skills to become capable participants in a "knowledge Age" world?
3. Design a learning activity which will help young people expand their language and relating skills so they can take greater control over their own brain development.
4. Develop a design for a school, classroom, home learning experience or community activity that helps young people develop language skills, and engage in many more positive interactions to overcome earlier developmental shortcomings.

Hart, B. & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful Differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks.