One year ago, I served as a panelist at a conference for several hundred high school teachers in Alberta, where one of the main questions was, “What must schools do to prepare young people for the workplaces of today and tomorrow?” The panel originally intended to focus on the idea of skills. As part of our preparation as panelists, we were given a Forbes article entitled “The 10 Skills Employers Most Want in 20 Something Employees,” which lists traits such as the ability to work in a team, technical knowledge related to a job, computer skills and the “ability to sell and influence others.”

The panel was, fortunately, a success, in that the panelists largely ignored the question of skills in favor of a more enriching conversation about the ways in which teachers can alter the trajectories of their students’ lives through the simplest of gestures and encouragements. It was a heart- warming occasion. However, the topic itself, and its focus on a high school audience, struck me. The concept of skills now prevails in modern thinking about education. This emphasis, which has been developing for many years, implies a reductionist view of what it means to be a human. Value is attributed to the things that a person is able to do and how they are able to market themselves.

The skills discussion is framed within larger narratives, such as that of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” recently developed by the World Economic Forum and its founder, Klaus Schwab. Through these stories, we arrive at a point where it is taken for granted that a good education involves the development of skills, to be of use for employers and workers in their careers. Moreover, through this emphasis on skills training, we lose touch with wisdom, which implies the use of knowledge with style. I do not believe that we should entirely reject public discourse on skills— it can be of value depending on how it is framed— but the skills conversation through a predominantly economic lens has already gone much further than it should. It numbs the minds of those that care about improving the world.