Antoinette Ellis?s five-year-old daughter, Zariah, already knows what she wants to be when she grows up. Her main gig will be scientist, but she plans on earning extra income as an opera singer and a part-time DJ. This future may not sound particularly realistic, but Ellis is nonetheless doing all she can to foster her daughter?s interests. Zariah watches videos of opera singers, she?s taking music lessons and she?s often conducting little experiments, as she did this past summer, when she planted strawberries and vegetables in her grandfather?s backyard.
Whether Zariah ultimately becomes a multi-talented scientist-entertainer remains to be seen, but Ellis is confident she?ll succeed at whatever she chooses to do. That?s because, on top of encouraging her to garden and sing, Ellis is also teaching her to be curious and to solve problems, which are just some of the skills she?ll need in the future. She?ll enter the workforce around 2035, alongside an increasing amount of vastly more intelligent technology?and maybe even robots. Over the next couple of decades, the job market is likely to undergo some dramatic changes. With technological innovation happening at a rapid pace, much of the work we do today could be automated out of existence. At the same time, new jobs will pop up?but no one knows for sure what those jobs may be. According to an October 2018 HSBC study, nearly 40 percent of Canadian parents are concerned about how technological change will impact their children?...