Emotional education is not a workshop

According to the report Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work by the International Monetary Fund (2024), “40% of jobs worldwide will be affected by artificial intelligence. In advanced economies, this figure rises to 60%, and around half of these jobs will suffer a negative impact.”

If we conceive the educational system as a chain that enables qualified entry into the workforce that is, schools prepare for university, and university prepares for work a massive transformation will be inevitable because what is taught today will become irrelevant in many areas.

So why go to school then, if what is taught will no longer be necessary?

Although we have tried for decades, we continue educating as if students’ brains were empty and teachers were the experts responsible for filling them with content. Attempts to position the teacher as a mediator between external knowledge and the student’s own understanding remain a dream in many contexts.

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Changing Educational Paradigms

Click on the image to the left to watch an excellent animation of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson.

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Now that anyone can photograph an arithmetic problem and get the answer, or identify a flower and know its species, what once seemed essential loses its meaning. The teacher is no longer the main source of knowledge: that role belongs to artificial intelligence, which we carry in the pockets of our pants.

The previous question repeats itself: why go to school if, as the educational system is currently set up, it no longer makes sense?

Every mechanical process performed by humans will eventually be replaced by a machine. However, machines will hardly be able to feel, be moved, or respond empathetically to sadness or anger without harming others. They will hardly be able to engage in affectionate dialogue, resolve interpersonal conflicts, or motivate a group through emotional connection.

What we must educate, then, are emotions the way we relate to others and solve problems assertively in short, the human capacities that cannot be automated.

The First National Study on Emotional Education in Schools in Spain (2021) concludes that investing in emotional education is an investment in psychological well-being, adaptability to the environment, and the future employability of students.

If currently the teaching of values or ethics is the poor relative of everything worked on in educational institutions, today it must be at the center.

A couple of workshops a year, a field trip to promote cohesion, or a weekly motivational speech by the responsible teacher is no longer enough. We need the heart of school work to be learning how to be human. Something so simple, yet so complex.

Simple because it is what we are: human beings. It’s like thinking an expert hairdresser needs to learn how to be an expert hairdresser. It’s something they already are. However, our emotions and the way we experience them adapt through a complex process throughout our life cycle. As mammals, we begin to learn how to live in our first ecological niche, our families. But then we continue a more complex socialization in a massive connection with other people we meet at school.

Many might think: “Alright, let’s do it.” But a new question arises: Have our adult educators themselves learned to manage their emotions, to work in teams, to be assertive, etc.? From my experience in schools and informal institutions in several Latin American countries, my answer is that we still have a great challenge ahead.

Added to this, there is plenty of data today about teachers’ mental health. Many suffer from anxiety and depression. Others leave the profession before five years of practice precisely because they feel overwhelmed in this context.

A decisive look from public policy is urgently needed. It is essential to train new teachers with this perspective and urgently modify the school curriculum so that socio-emotional education occupies a central place.

We will be displaced from the workforce by machines. The only stronghold we have left is to embrace our humanity. If we don’t, in just a few generations our young people will feel more comfortable talking to a robot than to a classmate who doesn’t know how to say please and who solves everything with crying or violence.