Today, October 3rd, at the ComTrade School in Belgrade, teachers, directors and pedagogues from the secondary Belgrade schools gathered to hear Dragan Varagić's lecture on the topic of employment in Serbia.
Dragan Varagić is one of the authors of the book "How to get a job in the 21st Century + 444 Tips for a successful career" and within the project “How to get a job in the 21st Century” he travels across Serbia to provide additional knowledge and open new opportunities for high school students. As he came to Belgrade, this time we made a lecture for directors, educators and teachers of secondary schools. Our plan is to visit Belgrade high schools by the end of this school year and encourage students for reading this book, that we believe can be valuable to them.
After the lecture, a panel discussion on the topic "Modern education today" was organized in order to answer the questions that are additional solutions for our education system, and what we need to change, so we can have more ready high school students for the labor market as it is today.
Nikoleta Rakocević, the owner of Queen Victoria Education and Translations School, an English professor and simultaneous translator, talked about how important understanding is in learning, not just reproduction; how important it is to encourage young people to think; and how important it is to organize their teaching in a different way.
The topic of the labor market has started, and we talked about that how many jobs will we lose in the future, how important is the artificial intelligence etc. and Sonja Jovanović, the HR of Ernst & Young Company, also pointed out to programs being implemented in large companies that are adapted to high school students, how much they can learn from all this, and get the job they want. Srdjan Radojčić, the founder of One Assessment, said that people are being tested for modern jobs today in so many ways, that social networks are also relevant. Today everything is talking about us, not just formal education and diplomas.
Speaking of different education systems, education in Finland, Singapore, Japan ... Srđan Ognjanović, director of the Mathematical Gymnasium, also referred to the need to think about how to educate children today that will work until 2070, and he said we need change according to the time. In fact, we, professors have a key, and what kind of education we provide to the younger ones, will start from the teachers.
And the youngest, yet completely equal panelist Nemanja Granić, who is today a scholarship student at the Faculty of Computer Science, gave his view of this problem, because until recently he was a high school student. What he sees from his perspective is that faculties and high schools can give width, but that each one is responsible for his future, and that if we are not proactive, no one will be instead of us. And that's precisely what we want, we want to wake up everyone.
We believe that we have managed to answer some of the questions what knowledge and skills are required in the 21st century. We are pleased that teachers, directors and pedagogues of secondary schools have been interested in a topic that we think is very important for our education.
Thanks to all panelists who took the time to exchange experiences and tried to improve our society. Thanks a lot to Zoran Stanojević who conducted us through this discussion, also the ComTrade School which gave us place for this event.
You can see video from lectures and panel discussions here.
If you are intrigued to give a lecture to students in your school, please contact us via email info@zivojinmisic.rs.