Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba, was asked at the World Economic Forum in Davos what his views are on education as a trained teacher. An exciting plea followed: “Being a teacher does not mean ‘I know better than you’ but ‘I know better because I have learned from others’. A teacher must never stop learning.” He adds,
"If we don't change the way we teach, we'll have big problems in 30 years."
He justifies his statement with the digitization, which could destroy up to 800 million professions by 2030. “We cannot teach children what machines can do better.”
The education system is based on imparting the knowledge of the past 200 years, according to the chairman of the world’s largest retail group. Jack Ma argues that children should learn something unique that machines can never do. He makes examples. What is important:
"Values, conviction, independent thought, teamwork, compassion - things that cannot be taught through pure knowledge."
But then how? The founder of the company is convinced: “Sport, music, painting, art (…) This is how we ensure that people are different. Everything we teach must be different from machines. If machines can do it better, we have to think about it.”
Why is this a successful CEO statement?
The discussion and the arguments have been around not just since yesterday, but Jack Ma puts his argumentation in a nutshell. Ma does not beat around the bush and does not bore with numbers. His core statement becomes clear in just a few sentences: He says where he sees the problems and what solutions there are.
At DIKT media training, 27 coaches and trainers prepare CEOs and press spokespersons to answer even unprepared questions eloquently and clearly. Contact: office@medientraining-institut.de
Picture source: Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org)/Photo by Natalie Behring/ Flickr Jack Ma (cc-by-sa-2.0)