Our Education System in 2035
How we progressed from teaching to learning
A postcard from Gracey about lifelong learning
June 24, 2035
There are four major differences between education systems in your world and how we learn in our world:
- Your world focusses on teaching; we focus on learning.
- Your teaching is led by others; our learning is self-directed.
- Your teaching is designed for groups; our learning is personalised.
- Your teaching develops left-brain skills; we focus on whole brain development.
By the time I would normally have started school, all of the world’s knowledge had been digitised and mapped to a Map of Consciousness. My Whole Person Index kept a track of where I was on the Map and my Daily Briefing suggested topics for me to explore. I was free to ignore the topics or go off in different directions if I wanted. I could go as fast or as slow as I wanted. No-one told me what I had to learn, although I was grateful for the prompts from my Briefing. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known where to start.
In our world, there are no grades, no tests and no competing with others. The concept of failure doesn’t exist. The only thing that is measured is how much time we spend absorbing knowledge, and what type of knowledge it is. The system that prepares our Daily Briefings knows exactly what knowledge every person has absorbed, and where they are on their journey towards wisdom and being able to make sense of the world. We can choose when we want to learn. I sometimes take weeks off from formal learning while I travel the world with dad learning about different cultures. Learning isn’t something I do for a few hours a day and on certain days of the week. I don’t have to go to a specific place to learn — the whole world is my classroom and my whole life is and continues to be, a learning journey.
We don’t go to schools to be taught by someone, but we do use the old school buildings as places to meet to discuss and debate what we are learning. Everyone’s Daily Briefing suggests a daily meetup at a local school, based on each person’s current interests, location and level of wisdom. These meetups include people from all ages and all cultures. The meetup suggests a topic for discussion and we all engage in a healthy exchange of ideas, discussion and knowledge sharing. At the same time, we learn valuable social skills from a wide range of different ages. These meetups teach us about empathy as we listen deeply to another’s point of view. They teach us communication skills as we learn to make our own point clearly and succinctly. We learn collaboration as we brainstorm and crowdsource ideas and solutions to our society’s challenges. And finally, we learn accountability as we design and implement our own solutions.
In your world, you rely on diplomas, certificates, doctorates and other qualifications issued by middlemen who arbitrate conformity to a system that no longer serves its citizens as well as it should. In our world, we’ve committed ourselves to the pursuit of wisdom and we’ve designed systems to aid us in that mission.
Early Learning
Education for us starts during pregnancy. My mum and dad talked to me while I was still in the womb, treating me like an adult. They knew that I was a spiritual being who had chosen to spend a few years on this planet. Mum and dad held the womb regularly and I could feel their warm hands sending love to me and preparing me for the transition from the world I came from. Dad would read to me every night and by the time I was born I’d already been told what to expect during and after birth. He’d told me about all the wonderful women leaders who had come to this world before me, and he’d also told me about the challenges the world was facing. While I was in the womb I’d already started thinking about the solutions I’d be bringing to the world as an adult. I’m an effective leader today at age 21 because mum and dad treated me like a leader from when I was still in the womb.
I was very fortunate to have a natural birth, and I came into the world in a stress-free transition. I remember warm water, soft lights and gentle music. Mum breastfed me, which gave me a preference for natural, wholesome nutrition throughout my life. I wasn’t given any inoculations, and this helped my immune system develop as much as it needed. I fell ill a few times as a baby, but my confidence grew by leaps and bounds as I learned my body could heal itself with enough rest, the right nutrition and loving support from mum and dad.
For the first eighteen months of my life — before I could talk — I was the teacher. Mum and dad ‘heard’ me while I unloaded the wisdom I’d brought from my previous world. Dad asked me many questions about my world and I thoroughly enjoyed our early exchanges. I knew I’d chosen the right dad, from the millions I could have chosen. While I was unloading, mum and dad would explain things to me as if I was a grown person. They would tell me what was going to happen and why. I couldn’t understand the whole idea of diapers and how they got dirty, so it was soothing to hear the explanation from mum. It was tough for me to understand that I’d have to forget all of the wisdom I had from my previous world and learn an entirely new set of rules for living in this world. But I knew that it had been my decision all along, and so I accepted the challenge with gusto.
I was allowed to play to my heart’s content, and I was very fortunate that dad allowed me to explore freely. I hurt myself quite often by falling out of trees and tripping over rocks. It was frustrating being limited by the physical laws of my new world and I had to keep reminding myself that I’d left my old world behind for now and that I could return there at any time. I promised myself that I would remember as much as I could about my previous world. I had a feeling that if I could remember what life used to be like, I might be able to solve some of the world’s problems dad had told me about.
Most of my play involved nature. I would clamber over huge rocks, hug trees and play with animals. Dad taught me how to be gentle and respect other living creatures. I became fascinated by systems and how animals worked together. Ants, bees, starlings, fish and their swarm behaviour continue to amaze me.
Dad read to me often during the day and especially at bedtime. Sometimes it was made-up stories and sometimes it was facts about the world. My mind was like a sponge and I couldn’t get enough. It was fascinating to discover the differences between the world I’d come from and the world I was in now. I couldn’t quite make sense of how everything fitted together, but I loved learning snippets of facts from the encyclopaedia dad would read from. I committed to making sense of all the information I was absorbing. I’d often ask dad why things were the way they were, and when something didn’t make sense I’d ask him to explain. Dad patiently answered all of my questions and I very quickly learned how to make sense of this new world. Learning was fun and absorbing knowledge became a natural extension of my playtime.
Summary
Our learning system is designed for personalised, lifelong learning and progression toward wisdom, rather than specialisation in a single topic. Specialisation is a characteristic of left brain thinking; generalisation is a characteristic of right brain thinking.
Questions to Explore
- What are self-organised learning environments? Ask Google
- What is vertical learning? Ask Google
- What is the difference between wisdom and knowledge? Ask Google
- What is the difference between specialisation and generalisation? Ask Google
- Do schools kill creativity? Ask Google
- What does Dead Poets Society teach us about learning? Ask Google
- Is the role of teacher obsolete? Ask Google
- Is going to college or university the best way to get a job? Ask Google
Postcards from 2035 is a series of profoundly simple interlinking ideas describing life in a highly desirable society, where everything and everyone is advanced, happy, intelligent and problem-free. It’s a blueprint of the world we need to create. The best thing you can do to help us get there is to share with your friends and get the conversation started with the questions this postcard has raised.
