How a Humanities Education could Empower Young Australians
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When SEVENmile Venture Lab Founder and CEO, Greg Twemlow, set up a pilot program called Enterprise in the Local Community, for students at a local high school, he was stunned at the response the program received. “We were so proud of the students as they presented their concepts,” he recalls. “Clearly, we had hit a chord with today’s youth.”
As part of the course, based on the Life-Skills Schema, students listen to local business owners explain the problem they need to be solved, identify needs, collaborate, analyze business problems, build solution frameworks, create pathways, create presentation decks, and pitch their preferred solution. The students achieved results that delighted everyone involved, especially the senior school management and the local business owners.
“We wanted to prepare the students for their futures in a world that is so different from the world my generation graduated into,” says Mr. Twemlow. “Students are coached and supported as they wade into the real world, but not given the answers. In the end, they learn to use the Life-Skills tools to deal with uncertainty and to translate ideas into real outcomes.”
The pedagogical design of the program is built on a matrix of life-skills that Mr. Twemlow designed using his decades of business and coaching experience combined with his experiences as a father of three boys, now grown and graduated from college.
Indeed, as we emerge from 2020, a year of unprecedented changes, into an increasingly complex and uncertain world, it’s clear that this approach might just be the best way to equip our youth to deal with the disruptions brought about by the fourth industrial revolution, a revolution accelerated by the global Covid pandemic.
Mr. Twemlow believes the Life-Skills Schema thinking can truly transform people’s lives and the broader community in which they live.
Says Mr. Twemlow: “A curious mindset and its many associated skills are increasingly needed across industries, and even more so in a post-pandemic world. With the increasing power of technology, distinctive human skills such as self-management, writing, and resilience will be more highly regarded than ever. As Daniel Pink makes the case for in his bestselling book, A Whole New…
