Live Your Emotions To Create Your Lasting Story Of Reputation

Education tomorrow will involve insights rather than only information. Earlier, students including India, Asia and many other parts of the world, used to be knowledge seekers, and teachers were knowledge resources. Only a learned few knew the appropriate resources and the place to find knowledge. Teachers used to be the saviors in this uncharted waters advising students on information to refer to the libraries. 

Those days are gone. With a high level of technology adoption and internet penetration, no one knows more a simple search on Google. Every educator faces the question of relevance. It also underlines the future of human education. The central question in next 10 years will be the merit of students investing substantial time and money for learning experiences in a teacher-student structure under a brick and mortar module. 

The role of educators in Asia has changed. From disseminating information to creating perspectives. In the true sense, the scope for educators has not decreased but grew manifold. From lack of information, we are passing through information overload syndrome. The challenge today for learners is not a dearth of information but identifying information that adds to their context and their lives.  The educators of tomorrow will help in connecting facts, creating contexts, making comprehensive links, building perspectives and finally crafting wonderful and appealing human story that touch lives. 

We might increasingly see the demolition of educational silos and bring all of it in the context of holistic education. For example, history, geography, chemistry and all others are connected by one single theme of human evolution. It's high time we take the progression of human civilization as the focal point and converge all others with it rather than addressing it subject wise. Mass Communication as a subject may not be relevant as digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) will transform Mass Communication into communication streams that are very individual yet distributed on a mass scale. There will not be any taker for one message distributed to all with a hope that it might strike a note with someone. These changes are sweeping in many parts of Asia currently. 

In economies that are a bit more advanced in technology like India, we shall witness the complimentary existence of machine learning and human learning and applications of both very soon. Each will create its niche. Human beings are a product of many thousands of years of evolution, while machines have been fed inputs. The difference is evolvement of knowledge vis-a-vis transfer of knowledge. To give an example, it's important to understand "loss" to define "love". Machines who have not experienced the feeling of "loss", might equate "love" with "gratification". Hence, possibilities are machine may be better equipped to handle the analytical part than the emotive ones. As educators, we must focus on producing thinking, responsive human beings, who are able to make connections. Head on with machines will not help our civilization. Instead, we need to partner machines to enhance capability.     

Another very interesting milestone in the evolution of education will involve creating individual stories. Education needs to equip learners to craft their own stories involving their reputation, their vision and help them to gain clarity on what they wish to achieve. Reputation denotes the overall experience of the relevant others with one. With individualism on the rise, traditional family structure breaking down, and beaten track of life getting lost in the woods, all of us have to create our own paths. For this, we need to make sense of our surroundings much more. Every moment there is the story that gets built around us and every minute there is a change in the ecosystem. Are we equipped to weave our individual stories into the broad story? How we combine our vision with the vision of our state, nation and overall journey of humanity? Education will no longer mean degrees but will highlight individual’s contribution to evolving human consciousness.       

Subhrajit Dutta

Guest Author Subhrajit Dutta is Associate Professor & Mentor PR-Corporate Communication & Digital Marketing King's College, Kathmandu and has worked with the leadership and cross-functional teams in many countries of Asia, Europe, the United States, the Middle East and North Africa. An alumnus of Symbiosis, Pune, in India and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, he has rich experience in handling internal and external communications programs including reputation management, recruitment marketing, and employer branding programs. Subhrajit is a first-rate Communications Trainer and has conducted workshops for leading corporate brands globally.