The skills we’re teaching? Already outdated, darling

There’s something a bit tragic – almost poetic – about a generation being told to “prepare for the workplace” when the workplace itself has already shape-shifted and slipped out the back door.

One in six young people potentially locked out of work or training in the next five years? That’s not a motivation problem. That’s a system problem. A dusty curriculum problem. A still-teaching-Excel-like-it’s-1999 problem.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: we’re still training people for tasks that machines are quietly gobbling up over breakfast.

The old promise was simple – learn the rules, follow the path, climb the ladder. But as the article puts it, the first rung of the career ladder has thinned to the point of near invisibility. And while young people are stuck rewriting CVs and firing off their 200th job application into the void, AI is backstage automating the very skills they were told would make them “employable.”

So what should we be teaching instead?

Not just “digital skills” (that’s already yesterday’s buzzword), but the deeply human stuff:

• Critical thinking – because algorithms don’t ask why, they just optimise what is
• Resilience – not the toxic “grind harder” version, but the kind that lets you navigate uncertainty without burning out
• Curiosity – the ability to keep learning when the job description dissolves overnight
• Care – for people, communities, and the fragile ecosystems we still depend on

These aren’t soft skills. They’re survival skills for a world where stability is the exception, not the rule.

And yet, funding still props up outdated pipelines, churning out graduates into what can only be described as a “graduate jobocalypse.” Meanwhile, the roles we urgently need – community builders, carers, environmental problem-solvers – are treated like side hustles rather than the main event.

It’s upside down.

The opportunity, though? Glorious.

If we pivot—really pivot—we could raise a generation not just fit for work, but fit for purpose. People who don’t just slot into systems, but reshape them. People who serve their communities rather than chase job titles that may not exist by next Tuesday.

But that requires something radical: shifting what we value.

Less obsession with what can be automated.
More investment in what makes us unmistakably human.

Because here’s the thing, cappuccino in hand:
If we keep teaching yesterday’s skills for tomorrow’s world, we don’t just risk a lost generation—we guarantee it.