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Idea 4 for 2025: Whither the 3Rs?

Writer's picture: Nitin DeckhaNitin Deckha

 

The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently surveyed employers for its Future of Jobs Report 2025. The top 10 Core skills in 2025, stated by the share of employers, who considered these skills to be core skills for their workforce are:

 

1.    Analytical thinking (69%)

2.    Resilience, flexibility, agility (67%)

3.    Leadership and social influence (61%)

4.    Creative thinking (57%)

5.    Motivation and self-awareness (52%)

6.    Technological literacy (51%)

7.    Empathy and active listening (50%)

8.    Curiosity and lifelong learning (50%)

9.    Talent management (47%)

10. Service orientation and customer service (47%)





 

Notably, 3/10 skills are what the WEF calls self-efficacy skills (resilience, flexibility, agility; motivation and self-awareness; curiosity and lifelong learning; while 2/10 skills are described as cognitive skills (analytical thinking and creative thinking) and as working with others skills (leadership and social influence and empathy and active listening).



In addition, in WEF’s graphing of Skills on the Rise, 2025-2030, the top 3 ranks are taken by technology skills: AI and Big Data; networks and cybersecurity; and technological literacy. Interestingly, these are followed by a range of cognitive, self-efficacy, and working with other skills, with creative thinking ranking 4th and resilience, flexibility and agility 5th.

Yet, what caught my eye is that arguably, the bedrock of educational systems, signified by the skill of reading, writing and mathematics, the “3Rs”, is perceived to be of decreasing importance. As a core skill, it ranked 21 out of 26, with only 21% employed surveyed considering it as a core skill. Moreover, in terms of Skills on the Rise, it is decidedly not; rather, declining and finishing almost in last place (which goes to manual dexterity, endurance and precision).





So, whither the 3Rs?? As a humanist, longstanding postsecondary educator, and fairly avid reader, as well as a parent of two young adults, I have long bemoaned the decline of reading and writing. I blamed the impact of social media and the expanded and ever-saturated culture of distraction; however, it seems that to this, I have to add the considerations of employers.  Of course, it’s about relative value; the importance of reading, writing and mathematics are declining against the increasing importance of key self-efficacy, cognitive and working with other skills, with the spectre of rising salience of technology skills.


It could be argued that mathematical skills are invaluable to key technology skills such as technological literacy, AI and Big Data, let alone networks and cybersecurity. I also might argue that mathematical skills can support creative thinking. In addition, there’s long been evidence of how reading activates the imagination which would ostensibly be seen to be part of creative thinking. In addition, writers and literary scholars have long pointed to how the reading of fiction can stimulate and build empathy of others. Of course, this also begs the question of research design and how the folks at WEF constructed the questions as well as how discrete each skill actually is from each other.


Nonetheless, read cursorily, people, notably young people in school systems around the world, may conclude that reading, writing and mathematics are no longer important and valuable. In that way, they may be weakening the possibilities to build other seemingly more valuable skills as well as larger and broader connections to the body of human knowledge.

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