Why we need the school subject “digital basic education”.
Austria puts “digital basic education” on the timetable. Clever founder Fredrik Harkort says: If Germany wants to become more innovative, it needs a school subject like this.
This article is the opinion of the author and conveys his point of view. You can find other information on the subject here.
Fredrik Harkort is co-founder of sent, an online learning service for children and young people. He is also a co-founder of the iddb, the initiative of German digital education providers. Previously, he founded the digital company “BodyChange” and worked as a TV producer. Not only as a father of two children does he think that Germany urgently needs to do more when it comes to digital education in schools.
Austria, a digital republic of education? The Scandinavian countries actually subscribed to such praise. No wonder! In the last published by the EU Index for the digital economy and society they ended up back in the top spots. But something is also happening in our neighboring country of Austria: the subject “digital basic education” will be added to the timetable there in the autumn – involved. One hour per week in the lessons for the first three classes of the lower school is the “computer science[n] Professional as well as media and application competence” as the theme Small newspaper reported.
In this way, Austria promotes interdisciplinary skills and is thus taking a certain step towards strengthening its ability to innovate and thus its entrepreneurial spirit in the long term.
Without interdisciplinary skills, Germany loses innovation potential
There is no question: it is still important that children receive a broad general education in a wide variety of specialist disciplines in order to understand the world and what people do in it.
But the demands on a profession of the present and especially of the future have changed fundamentally since the classic school subjects have been developed. Already in 2018, the Stifterverband and McKinsey in the course of the Future Skills Framework defines which skills will be important in the future, especially for the next five years. These are clustered according to three thematic blocks: In addition to technological skills (e.g. UX design or web development), there are the blocks of basic digital skills (e.g. collaboration or digital ethics) and classic skills, which include perseverance and adaptability.
Above all, it is interdisciplinary skills that make up the workplace of today and tomorrow. What does this mean for our republic of education? To put it in an economic picture: If we don’t manage to get children to build up significant know-how in these areas of competence, we develop them beyond what is needed. In other words: We are losing innovative potential in Germany every day.
What actually makes children happy?
Now the state makes it possible for the children to go to school, but not exclusively in order to make them available to the labor market as a human resource after 12 or 13 years. They should receive an education in which they can be part of society, with which they can provide added value for the community and also experience meaning in their actions. You should lead a happy and fulfilling life.
And this also includes offers tailored to the needs and goals of the children. For far too long we’ve gotten used to the fact that children “don’t feel like going to school”. In any modern company, the alarm bells would ring very loudly if customers were regularly dissatisfied. At school we just put up with it, even though it doesn’t help anyone. Our goal must be: Every child should have the basics after school to find their dream job and lead a self-determined life.
The ability to innovate begins at school age
Anyone who has children knows that they are the epitome of being open and curious. In the bad, because they just reach for the switched-on stovetop (but at least learn most from it). And in a good way, because children’s imagination is almost limitless and doesn’t need a workshop or sprint to spark it. Nevertheless, creativity, inventiveness and (self-)presentation skills are far too often stalled in schools because they are difficult to reflect in the educational plans that teachers have to pant through. How are founders supposed to grow up if you make it clear to them as children that problem-solving thinking and the independent development of solutions is not a good thing?
Achieving this, as in Austria, with a school subject called “digital basic education” is one way of creating space for skills beyond the traditional curriculum.
But in order to live up to the once justified claim of not only being a country of poets and thinkers, but also of pioneers and founders, we have to get away from the silo thinking that we are currently experiencing in the timetables. Project work is needed that combines classic school subjects. It needs playful approaches that satisfy our need to find solutions. You need the opportunity to indulge in your own passions and to further develop personal skills that are sometimes not given a grade later on.
In short: we need education that allows children to grow into curious adults. Without strengthening interdisciplinary skills in the timetable and beyond, we will hardly succeed.