South Africa’s youth need practical skills. Trades like plumbing and electrical work offer stability, relevance, and immunity from AI disruption.
A phrase which should be banned from use by anyone speaking to young people about their future is: “You can be anything you want to be.” No, you can’t.
If you don’t have science skills, you’re not going to be an astronaut and if you don’t have natural athletic talent, you’re not going to miraculously become the next Akani Simbine.
Yet, still our educational system allows young people to dream impossible dreams and then they end up bitter and angry when those dreams don’t come true.
Our secondary and tertiary education marketing is angled towards “getting a degree”, a supposedly magic piece of paper, which will open up the doors to wealth and happiness.
Now, there are degrees and degrees, of course… but we would put our money on the fact that the majority of unemployed graduates in South Africa are clutching bachelor of arts or similar “soft” qualifications.
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That is not to demean those areas of education; it is to point out that our society and economy is becoming increasingly technologically complex and involved… and, sadly, people who work with words and not their hands are going to be the first replaced by artificial intelligence (AI).
Experts we speak to today advise a radical rethink to begin to orientate young people towards the trades. It makes sense: someone always needs a plumber or an electrician – and how will AI scramble up to the top of a windmill electricity generator to carry out a repair?
Apart from introducing more trade courses, or modules focusing on working with your hands in the school curriculum, we need to return to the old system of trade schools and apprenticeships.
But more than anything else, we need to change attitudes and get young people to believe that manual labour and trade work does not somehow make them an inferior person.
