Learning to Learn: the Path to the Development of Young Talent
How can we prepare companies and young workers for a tomorrow we cannot foresee? We need to start with education, and here lies a challenge: current educational systems are still shaped by the rigid needs of the past — not by the adaptive demands of the future. Teachers must act as “agile learners”, able to convey relevant skills and foster the ability to transfer competencies to new contexts.
Image: LinkedIn
From Education to Companies
We constantly talk about preparing young people for the future. But how can we do so if our education systems remain stuck in the past? In a world shaped by accelerated technological change and generative AI, we are preparing young people to compete in a system from another century — when what they truly need is to learn to adapt, to question, and to create. Learning to learn!
In outdated education systems, it is not only students who are being failed — teachers are also being failed. It is time to rethink teacher training, which is essential as a strategic investment for universities, companies, and the country. If we want agile learners, we need agile teachers — and systems that believe as much in the growth of students as in the growth of their educators, enabling the latter to pursue personalised learning paths and maintain constant contact with the real changes occurring in companies and the world.
Much of the education system continues to be designed to optimise standardised metrics and university entrance exams. These metrics often reward memorisation, individual performance, and technical accuracy — skills increasingly automated by AI. Meanwhile, the truly necessary skills are changing rapidly. According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, 63% of workers face a skills gap, which will lead to many jobs changing in the next five years, with 69 million new roles created and 44% of workers’ skills expected to change by 2028. UNESCO and the OECD warn: many of the professions students will have ten years from now do not yet exist.
Image: World Economic Forum Table
The Artificial Intelligence Revolution Has Already Arrived
Banning AI from classrooms and companies is like trying to stop a tsunami with your hands. We may delay a few waves but the tide always prevails. We cannot ban disruption we must teach young people how to surf. This means placing critical thinking, creativity and ethics at the centre of the learning process. If a young student or worker cannot distinguish a deepfake from real news or does not recognise the biases in the tools they use then we have not prepared them for the real world. Surfing the AI wave is learning to navigate uncertainty with curiosity and responsibility not with fear.
Self-Knowledge as the Foundation of More Personalised Learning
We talk a lot about soft skills but we rarely assess them. And we know that each person has their own ways of learning and thinking. Some are problem-solvers, others communicators, synthesizers or creators. These abilities can be taught and developed — but it all starts with self-knowledge.
Image: World Economic Forum
Europe’s demographic reality is changing: the population is aging, birth rates are decreasing, and lifelong learning is becoming essential. This opens opportunities to rethink educational models. If we have smaller and more diverse classes, why not make education more personalised? Why not design educational pathways based on personality, learning style, and natural strengths?
Balance and resilience
Maintaining balance, adaptability, and curiosity in a constantly changing world is essential. We need to stop training young people only for speed and begin preparing them for adaptability and resilience, to stop pushing them towards traditional visions of success and instead support them as they discover who they are and how they learn. More than a race to the top, life should be a purposeful learning journey. In a time of disruption caused by Artificial Intelligence, geopolitical instability, and economic transformations, young people need not only answers but the right tools to ask the best questions.
Article by Sérgio Almeida, in partnership with Vida Económica.
