I have been interacting with a lot of high school students over the years and have had open conversations with them about their future and careers, in all these conversations I sensed that there is still a big conflict between what the students aspire to become and what their parents want them to be. Taking up science stream and building a career in that path is still the most dominant choice. In this aspect clearly the world has not moved on, especially the parents who still want to impose their ideals on children.
Ironically the world outside seems to think exactly the opposite of what the average parent thinks about careers. Design, aesthetics, creativity and innovation are the buzz words in almost all industries globally. The world is clearly moving towards a convergence of subjects and faculties. It is not enough for engineers to be good at their subject alone, they are expected to be creative and design thinkers as well. The trend is a convergence or confluence of art with all fields.
Design Thinking is the word that everyone is talking about, almost everything that had a fixed pattern in the past is being reinvented and reimagined with design thinking. Travel is no longer as difficult as it used to be – Uber & Ola have made commuting simple, online travel booking sites have made destinations accessible, Air bnb has made a hotel out of homes and everything under the sun can be ordered online. Fresh ideas solving traditional problems are changing the world.
Content creation is the other big focus these days and the amount of AV content being created is incredible. Schools are way behind in this area as they are still teaching languages from lessons that were written a century ago and the only means of content creation in schools today is the written word. Students today are not excited about writing they are more comfortable creating content in the audio, visual, image and infographics formats.
There is an urgent and dire need for schools to educate their parents on the importance of new age career trends and encourage them to be open to the idea of their children taking up Arts & Media. There is a massive future for children who are creative and can use design thinking to solve problems. Educators need to open their minds and allow children to create content beyond the written word.
LXL Ideas organised the International Kids Film Festival (IKFF) which was hosted by over 4000 schools across 20 countries. Seeing the joy of the kids watching films was a sight to behold and the learning they garnered by being exposed to films in 20 odd languages clearly demonstrates that children today are very open to new languages and cultures.
IKFF is now moving into its new phase where it will enable students to Learn the craft of film making. Learn Cinema is an online film making tutorial designed especially for school students and it is live on www.lxl.in