Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

by Peter H. Diamandis

Another Brick in the Wall Our current education system was forged in the heat of the industrial revolution, a fact that not only influenced what subjects were taught but also how they were taught. Standardization was the rule, conformity the desired outcome. Students of the same age were presented with the same material and assessed against the same scales of achievement. Schools were organized like factories: the day broken into evenly marked periods, bells signaling the beginning and the end of each period. Even teaching, as Sir Ken Robinson put it in his excellent book Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, was subject to the division of labor: “Like an assembly line, students progressed from room to room to be taught by different teachers specializing in separate disciplines.” In their defense, the transition from education as a rare treat reserved for the clergy and aristocracy to one where everyone was entitled to free schooling was nothing if not radical. But it has been over 150 years since then, and our education system has not kept up. Robinson himself has become one of the loudest voices calling for reform, arguing that today’s schools—with their emphasis on extreme conformity—are killing creativity and squelching talent. “As humans, we all have immense potential,” he says, “but most people pass through their entire lives with that potential untapped. Human culture, and school is a fundamental component of how we pass along that culture, is really a set of p...