By Yiler Huang

The social and industrial effects of The Robot Curve are coming, and the world has underestimated its power. We need some changes in our education system to make sure we stay on the high ground to avoid being replaced by robots and AI.

Our society is facing a huge change in robots and AI, and the author of The Robot Curve Marty Neumeier thinks that robots and AIs are going to replace more and more jobs in the near future. Because the world is facing such a huge change, he thinks one of the best ways to make humans adapt to the new automation and robotic career environment is to update the current education system so we could teach our future generations how to avoid being replaced by robots.

According to The Robot Curve (Neumeier, n.d), it is very possible that many current jobs will be replaced by robots and AIs. Nuemeier mentioned that even many of the skilled jobs have high potential for being taken over. However, it is very hard for robots to replace creative jobs, just like there is an invisible gate on the robot curve that stops robots taking over jobs that require thinking and creativity. The reason why is that it is very difficult to make robots and AIs think and make new ideas. This is because robots and AI could only create things from the input they got, unlike humans could just create a thought from nothing. However, even though we know that one of the best ways to keep future humans on top of the Robot Curve is to teach them how to think creatively, we are still not doing it. Neumeier said we have a severe problem in our educational system and the way we teach students is actually making them easier to get replaced - in other words, making them robots. In response, Numeier introduced some of his ideas about education for the future.

Neumeier expressed that the educational system nowadays doesn’t teach students to think creatively, which also means we are not making them harder to get replaced by robots. Instead, current education is training them to be robots. The content we teach our students now are things like tests and on-paper knowledge, which are the things robots and AIs excel in and surpass humans in. Also, only teaching rote knowledge might make the connection between the knowledge and students’ lives weak. In other words, the knowledge becomes useless and is never used in life again after school. Neumeier thinks the solution for this situation is “project-based learning”. Project-based learning is a system that lets people learn when they are doing or completing some kind of work, so people could have strong connections between the knowledge or skills they learned during the process.

In order to improve the education system we have now, I think the necessary things are: elimination of paper tests, utilization of projects in learning, teaching students to be creative, and training in metaskills. For the first point, in the article Standardized tests do not capture students’ skills, should be eliminated (Ibrahimi, 2021), the author thinks letting a student take tests is a very inaccurate and unfair way to measure a student’s ability or intelligence. The reason why is that Ibrahimi believes every student has things they are good at and not so good at, and tests only reward students who are good at taking tests. Also, a standardized test system is very unfair because people who are born with better memorizing abilities might have a bigger chance to get a higher score. Ibrahimi also said that many high schools and universities are still using standardized test systems as the most important factor in acceptance decisions, which means a student's fate in their life is often decided by a pile of test papers. Ibrahimi believes that might bring stress to students and possibly make them perform not as well as they might perform in normal life. This suggests that pen and paper tests do not give an accurate depiction of an individual’s actual abilities to perform real life activities,

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” said Albert Einstein.

After eliminating standardized tests, the next step will be to create a good project-based learning environment in school. In The Robot Curve, the author Neumeier concluded that students shouldn’t be learning on paper but by taking part in tasks or projects. Because students will learn how to use the knowledge or skills they got from completing their tasks, that makes all the things they learn during the process more useful and that also makes stronger connections between the knowledge students gain and students’ lives.

I think the last step of achieving an education that is suitable for the era of robots and AI is to teach the students how to think creatively and teach them how to use the metaskills Marty Neumeier has mentioned in The Robot Curve. Thinking creatively and metaskills are important because they are one of the huge advantages that humans have and robots do not (at least in near future). The reason why project-based learning is better than on-paper learning is that classes in common schools are about teachers talking to students most of the time. That means students are only getting the inputs of ideas but couldn’t provide an output themselves. However, creativity is always about outputting new ideas, so it is very hard for students to think creatively in the current education system. We should give students more space to think instead of putting information in their head.

The other thing students should work on in order to think creatively is the metaskills Neumeier has mentioned. The metaskills identified are meta-cognitive skills, social and emotional skills, and practical and physical skills. Meta-congtive skills means the skills that help students to think creatively and be able to come up with new ideas or knowledge with existing knowledge. For example, if a person has the ability of critical-thinking, they could analyze the knowledge they are presented with and see the logic behind it, so they could come up with new ideas from the existing ideas they have. Social and emotional skills are skills that help students work with each other and create a goal for themselves, including empathy, self-efficacy, and collaboration. Physical-skills are the skills that help students to get the information they need from the technologies or other kinds of references they have, because there are many kinds of information on the internet and available elsewhere.

An example would be our semester project last semester. We were given a job of making toys for kids last semester, so we learned 2D and 3D design because we need to design the toy for the clients, how to discuss with our clients to make sure what they want, researching the environment where our clients are to take a rough guess what would they like, and also some painting. These are all the skills that we learned to use on achieving our goal.

We have to make changes in our education system now, because the robots and AI are only going to get better and better and we can’t stop them. We have to start to make the changes right now so our future generations won't get replaced by robots and AI. If we do not adapt to the Robot Curve, it will force us to adapt to it when the time comes. That reality is one in which humans will no longer be able to create any value over machines and have lost all competitiveness.

Robot Curve的社會和產業效應正在到來，世界低估了它的影響力。我們需要對我們的教育系統進行一些改變，以確保我們保持在優勢，以避免被機器人和人工智能所取代。

我們的社會正面臨著機器人和人工智能的巨大變化，《The Robot Curve》的作者 Marty Neumeier 認為機器人和人工智能將在不久的將來取代越來越多的工作。由於世界正面臨如此巨大的變化，他認為讓人類適應新的自動化和機器人職業環境的最佳方法之一是更新當前的教育系統，這樣我們就可以教我們的後代如何避免被機器人取代.

根據 The Robot Curve (Neumeier, n,d)，目前許多工作很可能會被機器人和 AI 取代。 Nuemeier 提到，即使是許多技術性工作也很有可能被自動化。然而，機器人很難取代創造性的工作，就像Robot Curve上有一道看不見的門，阻止機器人接管需要思考和創造力的工作。原因是機器人和人工智能很難思考和提出新的想法。這是因為機器人和人工智能只能從他們獲得的輸入中創造事物，不像人類只能無中生有地創造思想。然而，即使我們知道讓未來人類保持在Robot Curve之上的最好方法之一是教他們如何創造性地思考，但我們仍然沒有這樣做。 Neumeier 說，我們的教育系統存在嚴重問題，我們教學生的方式實際上是讓他們更容易被替換——換句話說，讓他們成為機器人。作為回應，Neumeier介紹了他對未來教育的一些想法。

Neumeier 表示，現在的教育系統並沒有教會學生創造性地思考，這也意味著我們並沒有讓他們更難被機器人取代。相反地，當前的教育正在訓練他們成為機器人。我們現在教給學生的內容是考試和紙上的知識，這是機器人和人工智能擅長並超越人類的東西。而且，只教授死記硬背的知識可能會使知識與學生生活之間的聯繫變得薄弱。換句話說，這些知識變得毫無用處，並且在放學後再也不會在生活中使用。 Neumeier 認為解決這種情況的方法是「基於項目的學習」。基於項目的學習是一種讓人們在做或完成某種工作時學習的系統，因此人們可以在他們在此過程中學到的知識或技能之間建立緊密的聯繫。

為了改善我們現在的教育體系，我認為必要的事情是：取消紙本質考試，在學習中利用項目，教學生創造性，以及metaskills培訓。對於第一點，在文章Standardized tests do not capture students’ skills, should be eliminated（Ibrahimi，2021）中，作者認為讓學生參加考試是衡量學生能力或智力的一種非常不準准確和不公平的方式。原因在於Ibrahimi認為每個學生都有自己擅長和不擅長的事情，考試只會獎勵擅長考試的學生。此外，標準化的考試系統是非常不公平的，因為生來就有更好的記憶能力的人可能有更大的機會獲得更高的分數。Ibrahimi還表示，許多高中和大學仍在使用標準化考試系統作為錄取決定的最重要因素，這代表一個學生的命運往往由一堆試卷決定。 Ibrahimi 認為這可能會給學生帶來壓力，並可能使他們的表現不如他們在正常生活中的表現。這表明紙筆測試並不能準確描述個人執行現實生活活動的實際能力。，

「每個人都是天才。但是，如果你以爬樹的能力來判斷一條魚，牠會終其一生都認為自己愚蠢。」 －亞伯特 愛因斯坦。

取消標準化考試後，下一步將在學校營造良好的項目式學習環境。在 The Robot Curve 中，作者 Neumeier 得出結論，學生不應該在紙上學習，而應該通過參與任務或項目來學習。因為學生將學習如何使用他們從完成任務中獲得的知識或技能，這使得他們在此過程中學到的所有東西都更加有用，這也使得學生獲得的知識與學生生活之間的聯繫更加緊密。

我認為實現適合機器人和人工智能時代的教育的最後一步是教學生如何創造性地思考並教他們如何使用 Marty Neumeier 在《The Robot Curve》中提到的metaskills。創造性思維和metaskills很重要，因為它們是人類擁有的巨大優勢之一，而機器人則沒有（至少在不久的將來）。項目式學習之所以比紙本學習好，是因為普通學校的課堂大部分時間都是教師與學生交談。這代表著學生只能獲得想法的輸入，但自己無法提供輸出。然而，創造力總是要輸出新的想法，因此在當前的教育體系中，學生很難創造性地思考。我們應該給學生更多的思考空間，而不是把知識塞在他們的腦海裡。

為了創造性地思考，學生應該努力的另一件事是 Neumeier 提到的metaskills。確定的metaskills是Meta-cognitive skills後設認知技能、social and emotional skills社會與情緒技能以及practical and physical skills實務能力與身體技能。Meta-cognitive skills是指幫助學生創造性思考並能夠利用現有知識提出新想法或新知識的技能。例如，如果一個人具有推理性思維的能力，他們可以分析他們所提供的知識並看到其背後的邏輯，因此他們可以從現有的​​想法中提出新的想法。social and emotional是幫助學生相互合作並為自己創造目標的技能，包括同理心、自我檢視和合作。practical and physical skills是幫助學生從他們所擁有的技術或其他類型的參考資料中獲取所需信息的技能，因為網路上有很多種信息並且可以在其他地方獲得。

一個例子是我們上學期的學期項目。上學期我們得到了一份為孩子們製作玩具的作業，所以我們學習了 2D 和 3D 設計，因為我們需要為客戶設計玩具，如何與客戶討論以確定他們想要什麼，研究客戶所在的環境都是粗略猜測一下他們會喜歡什麼。這些都是我們學會用來實現目標的所有技能。

我們現在必須改變我們的教育系統，因為機器人和人工智能只會變得越來越好，我們無法阻止它們。我們必須立即開始做出改變，這樣我們的後代就不會被機器人和人工智能所取代。如果我們不適應Robot Curve，它會迫使我們在時機成熟時適應它。在這種情況中，人類將不再能夠為機器創造任何價值，並且失去了所有競爭力。

Neumeier, M. (n.d.). The Robot Curve. MARTY NEUMEIER. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from https://www.martyneumeier.com/the-robot-curve

Razzeti, G. (n.d.). The Metaskills You Need to Thrive in the 21st Century | By Gustavo Razzetti. Retrieved June 17, 2022, from https://www.fearlessculture.design/blog-posts/the-metaskills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-21st-century

Ibrahimi, Y. (2021, February 8). Standardized tests do not capture students’ skills, should be eliminated – THE ALGONQUIN HARBINGER. https://arhsharbinger.com/24840/opinion/standardized-tests-do-not-capture-students-skills-should-be-eliminated/ OCED. (2018). The future of education and skills Education 2030. Retrieved may 17 2022, from https://www.oecd.org/education/2030/E2030%20Position%20Paper%20%2805.04.2018%29.pdf

Hopp, S. (2022, January 12). What is the purpose of education? | Optimus Education Blog. https://blog.optimus-education.com/what-purpose-education

Doyle, A. (2022, March 15). Why Employers Value Critical Thinking. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/critical-thinking-definition-with-examples-2063745