Education Is Dead
I've spent thirty years in education, from tiny tots to engineering schools, University to training adults in companies.
Education, as we once knew it, is dying.
When anyone can access information instantly through the internet or Artificial Intelligence — when languages translate themselves, code writes itself, and maths solves itself — the old structures start to collapse. Just as the calculator revolutionised maths lessons and the internet transformed research, AI now confronts us with the illusion of omniscience: a mirage of all-powerful knowledge that tempts us into new dogmas, untested in the real world, and leads us toward yet another tragedy.
Every technology from fire onward carries this double edge. It can lift humanity toward a brighter future, or it can harm, divide, and destroy. And yet we press on stubbornly, even when the evidence — climate change being only one example — tells us to stop.
For decades, education systems have hammered state-approved messages into students, measured by the very same state. But education was never meant to be reduced to exam scores. We learn far more than academics: we learn how to fail, how to grow, how to relate, how to be human. When students become dots on a graph, we stop seeing them as people. And when educators are pushed to produce ever-increasing “productivity,” we lose sight of their humanity as well. The state sets the curriculum, writes the exams, and enforces the dogma — then demands more from those caught inside it.
National curriculums were meant to guide children toward their place in society, helping mitigate social disadvantage and supporting physical or cognitive difference. Instead, we have failed them. We no longer prepare young people for a society changing at a pace never seen before, nor for a world of work transformed in the last decade alone. Our greatest social challenges — drugs, violence, poverty, climate breakdown, generational debt — remain unsolved, yet parts of our education systems behave as if the Reformation never happened.
We prepare children for a world that existed in the year our teachers were born at best.
Education was also meant to be lifelong. Open University, MOOCs, and online learning environments were designed to open doors — and they do, but mostly for the already motivated, the already educated. Those who need these pathways most are still left behind.
The truth is harsh:
Good students chase grades as if they define their worth.
Struggling students chase escape from the boredom of systems that don’t see them.
Many graduate only to face the same grinding emptiness in low-wage work — or unemployment as those jobs move to cheaper countries. Before we chased post 16, then degrees, now masters, and in the future doctorates.
In 1978 China had 18 doctoral students. In 2021 that is 970 000 students. The race the top or the race to the bottom.
Education has lost its head, its heart, and its direction.
The UK spent about £8,000 per student in state education this year. France invested around €80 billion. Across Europe, roughly 5% of GDP goes to education — 7% in Sweden and Iceland, and 3% in Romania. In theory, we should be ploughing money into children’s futures. Yet too many schools face budget crises. Buildings crumble. Playgrounds and playing fields are sold off. Childhoods are sacrificed in the race for success. Potential is wasted. Gifts, talents, and special needs go unseen.
We can do better. We must do better.
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My Response
1. The contradiction of AI
It breaks the old model of teaching, but it also exposes that the old model was already failing. — when answers are everywhere, education must shift from what you know to what you can do with what you know, and even further: who you become in the process.
2. The system is mechanising humans
My point about students becoming “dots on a graph” is painfully accurate. Once metrics replace meaning, both learners and teachers become expendable parts of a machine. This isn’t a failure of individuals — it’s structural.
3. The world changed. Education didn’t.
Work, society, communication, identity, and technology transformed radically in 10–15 years. Schools did not. That gap is now a chasm.
4. The heart of my argument
I amnot saying education is useless.
I am saying education as an institution forgot what learning actually is.
5. Where things go from here
The next wave won’t be about classrooms, grades, or standardised content. It will be about:
human skills (creativity, empathy, critical thinking)
ecological thinking
psychological resilience
learning communities
small, local, adaptable structures
self-directed learning supported by mentors
technology as a partner, not a master
Education as a means, not and ends.