Your Child Is Being Prepared for a World With Disappearing Jobs. And We’re Running Out of Time To Help Them.

A few years ago, conversations about AI and job loss felt distant. Abstract. Something we could think about “later.”

But that “later” has arrived far sooner than anyone expected.

Right now, in 2026, companies across the world are cutting thousands of jobs, not because they are failing, but because they no longer need as many people. AI is doing the work faster, cheaper, and at scale.

Today Oracle, a multinational database management company providing global cloud computing, announced 30,000 global job cuts ( with 12,000 in India alone ), stating that they were opting to invest in AI infrastructure.

This is not a surprise, or a one off. This is what has been predicted for years. This is what we have been warned so many times about. And it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

AI is replacing the human workforce at a speed that most people cannot fully comprehend. Tasks, responsibilities that required human teams significant time and money, just 5 years ago, are being carried out by AI at a fraction of the time and cost.

This time is scary for all of us. But even more so for parents. Or at least it should be.

Because while this is happening in real time, most of our children are still being educated for a version of the world that no longer exists. They are still being trained to memorise, to follow instructions, to perform under pressure, to compete for marks. They are still being told that if they work hard enough, score high enough, and choose the “right” career, they will be secure.

But what if that entire promise has already expired? What if those same jobs that our children are working so hard to secure will not exist even when they sit for their exams? What if the skills that are being killed at school are the exact ones that will decide if they succeed of fail?

The data is not subtle anymore. Hundreds of millions of jobs globally are already exposed to automation. Entire industries are being restructured. Entry-level roles, the very stepping stones young people rely on, are disappearing.

And perhaps the most uncomfortable truth of all? It is not just low-skill jobs. It is the very careers parents have trusted for generations. Medicine. Law. Engineering. Finance. The “safe” paths, the prestigious respectable paths. 

AI is already diagnosing, analysing, writing, coding, predicting. Not perfectly. But fast enough, and improving at a rate no human system can match. So we have to ask ourselves a very difficult question. What exactly are we preparing our children for?

Because if your child is 10 today, they will enter the workforce in less than a decade. And that world will look nothing like the one we grew up in. There will be fewer predictable careers. Fewer linear paths. More uncertainty. and more competition. And far less tolerance for people who can only follow instructions. The advantage will not belong to the child who can memorise the most.

It will belong to the child who can think, who can adapt, who can question, who can create something new when there is no clear answer.

And this is where the urgency really sits. Because these are not skills that suddenly appear at 18. They are built slowly, over years, through the way a child experiences learning. Through whether they are allowed to question, whether they are encouraged to think, whether they are trusted to explore, whether they are seen as individuals, or forced to move as part of a system.

What we are seeing right now is not just a technological shift.

It is a global exposure of how outdated our education systems have become. Because when information was scarce, memorisation made sense. When jobs were predictable, compliance worked.

But today? Information is everywhere and answers are instant, and the only thing that truly differentiates one human from another is how they think. And yet, in response to all of this, what are we doing?

More tuition. More pressure. More exams. More pushing. As if doing more of what is already broken will somehow prepare our children for a completely different future. It won’t.

If anything, it is doing the opposite. It is exhausting them, disconnecting them, burning them out. Stripping away the very curiosity, confidence, and independence they will need the most.

This is not about fear. It is about clarity. Because once you see what is happening, you cannot unsee it. And once you understand the scale and speed of this shift, you realise something very important. We do not have time to be passive about our children’s education anymore.

So the question is no longer: “Is my child doing well in school?”

(You can read about how to spot whether your child is doing well in school, here in our blog on the topic or read about child development in Sri Lanka here.)

It is: Is my child being prepared for the world they are actually going to live in?

Are they learning how to think? Are they developing the ability to adapt? Do they feel confident navigating uncertainty? Do they know how to learn, not just what to learn?

Because that is what will protect them. Not being top of the class, or district, not being ranked at school, not the certificates that they have acquired instead of deep learning.

There are already environments where children are being prepared differently, spaces where learning is not about memorising and repeating, but about thinking, questioning, collaborating, and building real understanding. Where children are not shaped to fit a system, but supported to grow into who they are. Where the future is not an abstract idea, but something that actively shapes how learning is designed. Where their skills are developed and their entire education is shaped to respond to this colossal global shift.

And that is the shift we need to be making. Urgently. 

Because the world is not waiting. And neither should we.

(I recently took part in a Podcast with From the Island on this very same topic, you can watch it on YouTube here)