Making Children Fit for the Future: Required Skills

Children and young people want to be happy and successful both in the present and in the future. They need skills to be able to develop positively in their current family and life situation. This includes, for example, coping with life in different family types and (migrant) environments, with the limited time of their parents (even to the point of neglect), with the separation or divorce of their parents, with being conceived as a "test tube baby" or by a father they do not know, with wealth, poverty or migration status. Children and young people will have to become independent at an ever earlier age and take on more and more responsibility for their school performance and their leisure activities (including their media consumption). As they will spend less time with peers outside of educational institutions (i.e. in their neighborhood, in apartments, in youth groups, etc.), they need to find friends primarily in daycare centers or all-day schools. Children and young people must learn to respond positively to the educational opportunities in daycare centers and schools.

Moreover, children and young people need skills for the world of tomorrow - how they can be acquired will be discussed on this website. These skills were already derived from future trends, they now only need to be summarized. This is done in the following table, where they are systematized according to skill areas.

Competencies for the World of Tomorrow
Areas of Expertise	Competencies
Personal and Emotional Skills	individual personality, character strengths, diverse interests positive self-image, self-confidence, self-assurance, courage, optimism physical and mental hygiene: healthy lifestyle, physical activity, self-management, self-discipline, meaningful leisure activities, hobbies, media skills flexibility, mobility ability to endure stress and high pressure to perform, ability to relax resilience, ability to cope with everyday stress and critical life events, willingness to help oneself, perseverance individual value system (e.g., derived from one’s religion), meaning in life, willingness to take responsibility, positive attitude to partnership and family ability to reconcile family and career acceptance of the limits of growth, willingness to make sacrifices and to adopt an energy-saving and resource-conserving lifestyle, quality of life considered to be more important than more consumption/possessions love of nature, environmental awareness, ability to protect the environment in practice
Social and Communicative Skills	communication skills (clear and understandable language, large vocabulary, complex sentence structure if necessary, ability to listen), mastery of written language being able to perceive other people correctly, sensitivity, empathy team and cooperation skills, willingness to integrate others and to adapt to them, assertiveness, conflict resolution skills, leadership skills (especially for leading teams with very different compositions) appropriate (professional) interaction with (much) older and younger colleagues, superiors and subordinates, with those of the opposite sex or from other cultures, with specialists in other countries competence in "self-marketing" ability to build functioning networks (circle of friends, sociability, mutual emotional support and practical help) positive couple and parent-child relationships, educational skills appropriate (private) interaction with old and disabled persons and people in need of care, with migrants and refugees, with people in other countries
Cognitive and Learning Method Skills	ability to reflect, judgment, critical attitude, problem-solving skills, systems thinking curiosity, enthusiasm for experimentation, creativity, productivity ability to concentrate, perseverance motivation to learn and to achieve, willingness to engage in lifelong learning, relearning and retraining learning how to learn, effective and efficient processing of information use artificial intelligence and relevant computer programs, use the Internet sensibly, be able to handle technology entrepreneurial and organizational skills, time management

In addition to these skills, children and young people also need to acquire knowledge:

a broad general knowledge (mathematics, natural sciences, technology, economics, law, geography, humanities, music, art, environmental sciences, demography, politics, psychology, pedagogy, etc.),
knowledge of current problems (financial and economic crises, national, company and household debts, demographic development, climate change, environmental destruction, lack of raw material and energy, etc.)
foreign language skills (Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, etc.)
IT skills
knowledge about future trends
professional knowledge

While many skills and the general knowledge are (gradually) learned during childhood and adolescence, basic professional knowledge is acquired during vocational training or at colleges/universities and specialist knowledge at the workplace.