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Education stopped evolving while the world moved on

What if the real problem with our schools isn´t the funding, the teachers, or the tests, but the fact that the system itself belongs to another century?



I often think about how strange it is that we live in an age of instant information, but our education systems still look like old factories. Rows of students and standardized outcomes with a fixed curriculum. When I look at the way most Western societies still educate young people, it feels like watching an old theatre play performed on a modern stage. The lights, the sound, everything changed but the script hasn´t (and the audience has).

We built our schools for a world that rewarded compliance and repetition. The industrial economy needed people who could follow instructions, stay consistent, and show up every day at the same place and time. In that context, the model worked pretty well. It was efficient and fair in its attempt to make education accessible to everyone. But in the meanwhile the world has really changed

Today, the skills that matter most such as creativity (yes, especially now that AI is rising), adaptability, emotional intelligence, problem solving, are the ones our education systems struggle the most to teach. And as someone who´s spent years in the world of work and people development, I sadly see the consequences of this every day. Also on myself, to be quiet honest.

Young grads enter work life with impressive credentials but a very limited ability to navigate the unknown and ambiguity. They know how to prepare for exams, but not for complexity. They can memorise theories, but not necessarily translate them into real life actions. Students should NOT be blamed for this. This piece wants to be a critique towards a dusty educational system that we, together, can try to change and influence.


A system that rewards the wrong things

One of the most damaging habits of modern education is that it still treats knowledge as something to be downloaded and repeated. The irony is that most of the knowledge we spent our childhoods memorising now sits one search away. What isn´t so easy to find is the ability to distinguish, synthesise, and think critically. When education measures success through standardised testing, we end up with uniformity and anxiety instead of competence and curiosity. Teachers know this well and most entered the profession because they wanted to spark understanding and curiosity, but they are also trapped inside systems that value and reward compliance over creativity. 


Where you are born still defines what you learn

If education was supposed to be the great equaliser, it´s failed at the job. Students in wealthy parts of the world learn coding and design thinking while students in poorer countries still fight for stable internet, enough teachers, and buildings that don´t leak. When we talk about "equal opportunities", we ignore that they start from different starting lines entirely. And this inequality follows people into adulthood, defining who gets access to internships, mentorship, and professional networks. Education doesn´t just transfer knowledge, it teaches who is allowed to take space in the world.


There was a joy called paideia

Paideia (παιδεία - yes, I do read old dusty books...) is the Greek concept of holistic education: forming character while building the intellect. Somewhere along the way, learning stopped being about understanding and became about optimisation and students now learn to perform. I can understand why and it´s easy to blame economics, competition, or technology. But when education becomes only transactional, it loses its power to shape character. The goal shouldn´t be only to prepare people for jobs, it should aim to prepare them for life. To help them make sense of the world and of themselves. I still believe curiosity is our most valuable resource as humankind. It´s what pushes humanity forward but for some reasons our system is designed to exhaust it early.


Teachers at the turning point

Throughout my university years (and also after), I´ve met teachers and professors with whom I discussed about the shortage in terms of resources and, turns out, it´s not only about salaries but mostly about purpose. They would like to feel that they´re part of a living system that values their judgement, that evolves and adapt, but instead bureaucracy and politics steers it. 

The burnout we see among teachers is the same struggle many professionals feel in rigid organisations and it´s really the exhaustion of being treated like a cog in a system that doesn´t evolve (and barely tries to do so). If we want better schools, we need to rebuild trust in teachers as professionals, not as mere executors of top-down policies. They also need more autonomy, support, and continuous learning (especially today!).


The technological gap

Despite the headlines about digital transformation, we still have a lot of classrooms operating as if the internet never happened. Meanwhile, the "digital divide" has become a social divide. Some students are experimenting with AI tools, coding, and design thinking before they turn fifteen while others barely have access to stable Wi-Fi. When people say "AI will change education", I tend to agree, but only if we change education first. AI can personalise learning, analyse progress, and free teachers from repetitive tasks but, without purpose, it risks amplifying the same biases and inefficiencies we already have. We shouldn´t teach kids how to use AI and that´s it, we should instead teach them how to think with it, and that´s a big difference.


Education and work: two worlds that forgot each other

In the corporate world, I see companies investing millions into reskilling and development. But the irony is that most of what they´re trying to teach should have been embedded in education from the start. We talk about "skills gaps" as if they´re accidents but, in reality, they´re pure design flaws. Education and work evolved as separate worlds that rarely speak to one another: one focuses on theory and the other on results. One rewards individual achievement and the other demands collective intelligence. Bridging these two worlds is about creating a continuous loop of learning, a system where people move fluidly between education and work, constantly updating their skills and their understanding of what work truly means.


The future we could build, together

So, what does a better system look like?

I think it really starts with redefining success and instead of asking how well students memorise information, we probably should ask how well they can learn, adapt, and collaborate. The goal should be to shape curious minds. Curriculums should also evolve faster and include the skills that matter: systems thinking, emotional intelligence, ethics in technology, civic engagement, and real-world problem solving. Students should work on projects that mirror the complexity of life, both at work and outside. Education should also be local and flexible. For example, a small rural community doesn´t need the same curriculum as a large urban one but, what they both need, is the ability to adapt learning to context.

And of course, we need to treat lifelong learning as a human right. The idea that education ends at graduation is one of the most damaging myths of school. Learning should follow all of us through every phase of adulthood, especially as technology continues to reshape how we work and what we value. And this is true not only for modern school, but also for the generation that graduated many years ago. As a society, most of us lack the adaptability to change, to evolve and to question our own truths. 

Change won´t come just from new policies or technologies. It has to come from a cultural renaissance (which is also my favourite artistic period!), a shared belief that education is not a service we consume but a collective act of growth that we all shape, as a society. When (and if) we rebuild education, we´re not just preparing people to go to work. We´re shaping citizens, thinkers, and human beings capable of empathy and imagination. And those are not "soft skills", I see them as 101 survival skills for the 21st century.

The hard part is that real transformation requires patience and requires asking deeper questions.


A closing thought

I don´t believe the education system is doomed, not at all. I believe there´s a lot of hope, but it´s clear that today´s system is tired. It´s carrying the weight of old assumptions in a world that has already moved on. Maybe the question isn´t how to fix education, but how to let it evolve. Because if there´s one thing learning has taught me, is that every system eventually becomes outdated, and not because it fails, but because the world it was built for changes and education is no exception. 

So, the next time we talk about reform, I hope we won´t start with exams or policies, but with imagination. With the courage to rethink what learning could be if we stripped it down to its essence: curiosity, purpose, and the shared act of making sense of the world together.

And maybe then, we´ll stop preparing students for life "someday" and start preparing them for life "itself".



Various sources:

This wonderful piece from Audrey Watters: https://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model

 
 
 
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