{"id":88564,"date":"2026-06-28T11:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/88564\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T11:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:24:12","slug":"in-the-age-of-ai-everyone-should-be-hiring-theater-kids-the-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/88564\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Age of AI, Everyone Should Be Hiring Theater Kids \u2013 The 74"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This spring, an estimated 3.9 million high school students<\/a> \u2014 one of the largest classes in American history \u2014 graduated into a world their education never fully prepared them for. They are, in many ways, the first graduating class of the artificial intelligence<\/a> era, launching into adulthood at a moment when the world around them is transforming in real time.<\/p>\n

Headline<\/a> after headline<\/a> laments the death of entry-level hiring, and according to the World Economic Forum, the skills<\/a> they\u2019re building will be out of date by the end of the decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As both a mother of two teenagers and the head of one of the nation\u2019s largest education charities<\/a>, I\u2019m asked a version of the very same question from both parents and policymakers: How can we ensure that today\u2019s students are learning things that are actually going to matter?<\/p>\n

I found part of the answer in an unexpected place: a high school theater.<\/p>\n

My daughter recently performed in her school\u2019s production of \u201cLegally Blonde: The Musical.\u201d She played Pilar, a scene-stealing member of Elle Woods\u2019 sorority. After the show, she cried \u2014 not from exhaustion or stress but from pride. And not pride in the accomplishment, but the learning that came with it.<\/p>\n

Of course, what she learned from that play won\u2019t show up on a standardized test. Colleges won\u2019t find it on her transcript, either. But like thousands of other theater kids, she\u2019s building exactly the sort of skills that the labor market is demanding.<\/p>\n

In the weeks leading up to the performance, she had to collaborate with a diverse cast, manage her time across competing priorities, take direction and feedback, recover from mistakes in real time and perform under pressure. She built confidence, resilience and the ability to communicate with clarity and presence. We used to call these \u201csoft\u201d skills. In the age of AI, they\u2019re the hard currency of economic mobility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that some kids who participated in the performing arts have landed themselves in positions of significant power and influence, including former Disney CEO Michael Eisner<\/a> and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As AI accelerates the automation of routine tasks, a growing body of evidence<\/a> suggests that the uniquely human capabilities are becoming even more valuable, not less. More often than not, these \u201cdurable skills\u201d are cultivated in places we don\u2019t traditionally count: theater productions, debate teams, student government, part-time jobs and community-based experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This raises an urgent question: If the skills that matter most for success in the world of work \u2014 and the world at large \u2014 are developed in unconventional ways, why do we continue to treat those experiences as peripheral?<\/p>\n

The simple answer is that our education system is largely oriented around what is easiest to measure over what matters most. If we can\u2019t measure it, we can\u2019t evaluate it. And if we can\u2019t evaluate it, why teach it? But when it comes to high school, what we measure is beginning to change.<\/p>\n

In recent months, a growing number of states are changing high school graduation requirements and replacing traditional diplomas with \u201cportraits of a graduate<\/a>,\u201d designed to provide a broader understanding of what students have learned that more holistically captures the skills necessary for success in life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Carnegie Foundation recently unveiled<\/a> a new set of skills progressions designed to complement \u201cdecode\u201d the \u201cskills genome\u201d by transforming skills like collaboration and critical thinking into their component parts \u2014 a significant step toward developing new forms of assessment, curricula and ultimately teaching methods that bring \u201ctheater\u201d skills to center stage.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

RelatedNew Report Reveals the Struggle Worldwide to Prepare Young People for Work<\/p>\n

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As business leaders begin to question<\/a> the value of longstanding skills-proxies \u2014 including even the college degree \u2014 they are signaling to young people that skills honed outside the academic context are not optional; they are essential. That includes designing hiring and interview processes that explicitly take human skills into account; assessing those skills as workers progress in their careers; and adopting training programs that focus on those skills alongside technical competencies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0More and more businesses are recognizing that if the pace of technological advancement isn\u2019t slowing down, the best way to keep up is to ensure that their employees have the resilience and agility to navigate a world of work defined by change.<\/p>\n

And for parents, perhaps most importantly of all, it may mean recognizing that the path to opportunity is not always linear or confined to the classroom. It\u2019s time to stop thinking of theater, sports and volunteering as ways of burnishing a resume for college. Those activities have always been the places where students learn to work together, navigate uncertainty and step up in scary situations. Reading and math will never stop being important, but without the skills to put academic accomplishments to work, too many of our young people will find those dire headlines starting to come true.<\/p>\n

My daughter didn\u2019t just perform in a musical. She practiced the very skills that will help her navigate a world where change is constant and careers are nonlinear. If we are serious about preparing young people for the future of work, we need to expand our definition of what counts as learning \u2014 and where it happens.<\/p>\n

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We\u2019d love to hear how The 74\u2019s reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers. Tell us how<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter This spring, an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,2524,46989,1651,43695,19338],"class_list":["post-88564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-commentary","tag-future-of-high-school","tag-opinion","tag-soft-skills","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}