Tone-deaf Tommy Friedman: Be a lifelong learner or find yourself fired. [View all]

[HughBeaumont]

Easy peasy stuff for a guy who married into a real estate fortune and has a cushy job writing victim-blaming books and unintentionally hilarious columns by the dozen.

The notion that we can go to college for four years and then spend that knowledge for the next 30 is over. If you want to be a lifelong employee anywhere today, you have to be a lifelong learner.

And that means: More is now on you. And that means self-motivation to learn and keep learning becomes the most important life skill.

That’s why education-to-work expert Heather E. McGowan likes to say: “Stop asking a young person WHAT you want to be when you grow up. It freezes their identity into a job that may not be there. Ask them HOW you want to be when you grow up. Having an agile learning mind-set will be the new skill set of the 21st century.”

(snip)

So the tough news is that more will be on you. The good news is that systems — like Khan-College Board — are emerging everywhere to enable anyone to accelerate learning for the age of acceleration.

Step back from all of this and it’s clear that thriving countries today won’t elect a strongman. They’ll elect leaders who inspire and equip their citizens to be strong people who can own their own futures.

Yeah, just like America, RIGHT??