Teaching Youth Real World Problem-Solving Skills

Imagine a world where every business, government, and nonprofit hired only new employees who had experience solving authentic community problems.

After all, if you’re a plumber, a salesman, a policeman, an investment banker, a retail clerk, a lawyer, a manager, a teacher, a marketing executive, a food bank director, a doctor, a television producer, a diplomat, or a small business owner, your workday is spent solving problems. Day in and day out.

Professional and blue-collar jobs that relied on repetitive tasks are being outsourced by computers and robots. Now the demand is for humans with problem-solving skills, especially “the 4Cs” of Critical-Thinking; Creativity; Collaboration; and Communication.

In a study by PWC, 77% of America’s CEO’s surveyed said that they are worried that skill shortages could impair their company’s growth. They say it’s the power skills of empathy, intuition, and the 4Cs that are the hardest to find; yet these skills are the most valued when hiring new employees.

Employers are desperate for workers who already know how to think critically about a problem, imagine and execute a creative solution, work in collaboration with diverse teams, and communicate with each other and their bosses throughout the process.

In a Gallup/Microsoft/Pearson study, young workers who learned these 21st century skills in high school or college “are twice as likely to have higher work quality compared with their peers”. These skills include knowledge construction, real world problem-solving, collaboration, self-regulation, communications, technology, and global awareness. Of these, real-world problem-solving ranked as the most important factor of higher work quality.

How in the world are students supposed to gain these skills? Studying physics and history? Learning algebra and Spanish? Reading literature and writing essays? Writing code and programming computers?

There is no reason to separate the learning from the doing. What if every K-12th grade student had the opportunity to solve an authentic community problem to make their neighborhood greener, safer, smarter, healthier, and stronger?

Students at the best schools already have this opportunity, but the number is way too low and varies wildly by ZIP code. Studies show youth in underserved communities are just as enthusiastic about contributing through service projects as their peers in advantaged neighborhoods, but the opportunities are few and far between.

Youth Service America has effective models that support youth-led projects. These young changemakers gain advantages over their peers, learning and practicing the problem-solving skills they need to be successful in school, work, and life. Using the 17 Global Goals as a framework, educators never have to worry about running out of community problems; there is an endless supply of challenges facing the world in health, education, human service, human rights, and the environment.

A student actually cannot do an effective service project without practicing the skills of critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Along with gaining job skills, this kind of civic engagement in childhood also leads to lifelong voting, volunteering, and philanthropy. Youth problem-solvers are also likely to learn, and practice, a virtue that every parent and employer holds in the highest regard: Empathy.

Thanks to human biology, young people are natural problem-solvers, attracted to new challenges, taking risks, and influencing their peers to join them. They see new solutions to old problems, and they listen more intently to each other than they listen to adults. This is less about rebellion and more about Mother Nature paving the transition for them out of the nest and into starting the next generation.

It’s no coincidence that some of America’s greatest companies were started in American teenagers’ bedrooms, garages, and dormitories. Think Dell, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple. The largest restaurant chain in the world, Subway, was started by a 17-year-old boy.

Adult champions are still crucial, so when we ask young people to tackle a community problem, they will need parents, teachers, youth leaders, and community experts to point them in the right direction and coach them along the way. As they discover their purpose, these relationships matter, and every young person is often just one caring adult away from success.

No one is suggesting doing away with reading, writing, and arithmetic. They are necessary, but not sufficient to filling the huge gap created by our economy’s shift to the next industrial age. Most jobs that children born today will take don't yet exist. Changes in communications, transportation, and energy are disrupting how we learn, work, live, and play. As a Deloitte report on the changing landscape for today’s 1.8 billion global youth who are between the ages of 15 and 29 notes, “The uneven distribution of talent and employment opportunity represents a global mismatch in supply and demand, leaving youth unprepared for the workforce and businesses without the resources they need.”

Hundreds of books and articles on management and leadership don’t lie -- running a business, leading a department, heading a school, or managing a team is hard work. But in this day and age of diminishing hierarchies, it’s no longer “lonely at the top” because no one is expected to be successful alone. Instead, teams of teams, working together to solve problems, have the best chance to achieve excellent outcomes. 

Let’s start giving all young people the opportunities to learn and practice these problem-solving skills in their own backyard, starting on their first day of school.

Steve Culbertson is President and CEO of Youth Service America, a global nonprofit that believes youth and communities thrive when they work together for the common good. For more information, go to YSA.org, and follow YSA and Steve on Twitter @YouthService and @Culbs