Education beyond the academics

Future-oriented education is designed to provide a holistic approach to acquiring knowledge and broadening, in real terms, what young people learn. This is the education process that sees well-beyond the academics and its location is not fixed in the classroom; it involves teaching students important life skills (personal hygiene, financial literacy, etc.), emotional health, understanding political power structure (local, national and international), and real-world habits (global economic inequalities, migration, resource management, climate change, etc.) alongside traditional school subjects.

How we teach children must evolve to optimise communities and the real-world as the teaching and learning laboratory. The education system must offer leadership programmes that go beyond academics; young people need to be provided with the right tools that equip them with critical thinking skills, emotional intelligence, and the moral clarity to make ethical choices to build the future that we all deserve.

Education must nurture, in students, values like empathy, integrity, and resilience to guide ethical choices; it must build self-regulation, stress management and healthy ways to process feelings; it must equip young people with financial literacy, time management and develop social competency.

Real change in the political space requires the defeat of the ingrained towards biased current systems whose emphasis is academic achievement. In a power obsessed society, formal education institutions have been turned into tools of propaganda warehouses that churn out compliant stooges and facilitate the elite’s agenda. In its attempt to justify existing inequality, the elite has drummed into the minds of those who would listen, the most divisive, controversial and dangerous ideological posturing which draws its strength from the exploitation and normalisation of evil habits – exploitation of the vulnerable, unfair taxation, conflict, etc.

In the face of a world shaped by the re-ignition of an ideological posturing that dehumanises certain population groups and makes concerted efforts to suppress and minimise real issues affecting lives of the ordinary person – climate crises, inequity, conflict, and division, we need to be creative with how we teach future generations how to navigate hierarchy and interpret the use of power.

Personal growth is vital for individuals to start breaking away with deep-seated habits, stereotypes, altering their mindsets and view the World differently; transforming organisational leadership ethos – shifting the political culture, driving innovation and implementing sustainable policy measures and re-designing society so impartiality is not an option in community socio-political spaces – organising grassroots movements and reforming policy.

We need to ask the question: Is the classroom’s capacity to reflect the world exaggerated and the World’s capacity to shape society deliberately minimised? And, how much of the World can be squeezed into a classroom without stunting the highly motivated scholar’s real and reimagined experience of his world?

Traditional classrooms alone are not enough to prepare young people for real-life challenges. Redesigning education systems is critical to socioeconomic and political reconstruction and development. Young people must be prepared to be effective participants in the real world and be valuable global citizens. Instead of compliance, they must be critical thinkers able to hold their leaders to account; they must understand that dissent is the best form of patriotism.

To ignore what shapes power in your community and country and how power works in society is to increase your vulnerability. No young person should be brought up to be comfortable in political ignorance; that kind of ignorance leaves people vulnerable to bad leadership and manipulation.

It must be an expectation that young people take an interest in local and national politics; no one should take pride in not knowing how power functions and how decisions are made in their community. The penalty young people pay for indifference to public affairs is to be confined to outdated norms and values and be ruled by evil old men.

Many redlines must be crossed so accountability becomes the foundation of our social and political system. People need to understand that protest beyond the law is not unpatriotic rather, tolerating bad laws is a betrayal to one’s country. A culture fixated on young people’s respect of elders and authority is not an obsession about young people’s discipline, but an obsession about young people obedience. Obedience is the most potent political sedative in humans’ history.

We need life coaches so young people can see beyond their immediate life outcomes and are able to imagine challenges and opportunities far beyond, and are able to forecast danger, deal with it before it hits the front door.

Obedience to authority is the biggest threat to the future and development of the ordinary citizen; it ensures compliance to the demands of the elite by the average citizen. Extensive damage has resulted from people following rules regardless of what that meant. It is important that our education systems develop and sustain critical thinking and build, in young people, humans who normalise dissent. It must never be seen as disrespectful to call for accountability from leaders.