Schools confront growing generational differences

A widely attended conference in Valmiera highlighted growing challenges in communication between teachers and students, LSM reported. The differences between generations are being intensified by the rapid arrival of new technologies and artificial intelligence in education.

The conference, titled “The Child Who Does Not Fit School?”, brought together experts from various fields, education and psychology specialists, and young people to discuss relations between students and teachers.

Baiba Zalcmane, a specialist in cultural education at the Valmiera municipality Education Department, said schools must learn to manage communication between several generations.

“We are all living in an interesting era in which we have to learn to communicate with one another anew because of these generational differences,” she said. Zalcmane added that as many as five generations may already be working in a single school and that artificial intelligence would inevitably affect the education environment.

Gustavs Maziņš, a teacher and instructor in business fundamentals, said the generational gap was noticeable even though he was only five years older than his secondary-school students.

“They are so different from me that this already creates, one could say, a generational imbalance or complete generational differences,” Maziņš said. He added that teachers must accept that the world is changing in order to continue working in schools.