Absorbing life skills - Many paths lead to a good career

It is hard not to agree with President Michael D Higgins’ weekend assertion that he believes the Ireland Skills Live exhibition, the first of which was held at Dublin’s RDS over recent days, “will in time be as important as the Young Scientist Exhibition”. Work, after all, is an ever-changing idea and there are many paths to realising worthwhile career and life ambitions.

The exhibition focused on the practical rather than the theoretical and this may give it an immediacy and relevance to young people trying to pick their way through life’s complications.

“It concentrates on most valuable skills, that some of the very best people who are thinking about how one can express one’s creativity in the most useful possible way, can use in any part of the world,” said Mr Higgins.

The nature of work is constantly changing. One researcher has suggested that 60% of the children starting school this year will work in jobs not yet imagined, much less invented. Economic pressures to move work to low-cost economies is relentless, as is the rise of automation which will make millions of jobs obsolete. It is necessary — prudent too — to respond positively to these changes.

Irrespective of that evolution practical, time-honoured skills will retain a reliable currency and offer real career opportunities to those prepared to absorb traditional skills. We can, after all, shape the future rather than allowing it to shape us.