Everyone agrees that education is hugely important
The thing is we're not particularly sure what we want from it
The aim of education should be to prepare us for the challenges of adult life
Yet from this perspective it's clear that schools fail all but for tiny portions of their students
Whether in highly academic private schools
Or in deprived government-run ones trouble-dealing with life's challenges
remains very wide spread indeed
Human ingenuity, energy, goodwill, and talent
is being lost on an industrial scale
to get more ambitious about education doesn't necessarily mean spending more money
building more schools, employing more teachers or making exams more difficult
Rather, it should mean focusing more on the real purpose of education
There are two fundamental tasks it should help us with: working and sustaining good relationships
In order to address these needs a future national curriculum might specify
that the following subjects be studied
Firstly, capitalism
A conspiracy of silence exists around the economic system we live within
We find it hard to change its bad sides or defend its strengths
because we simply don't fully understand how it works
A subject like maths should be geared to teach its number one utility for 99% of the population
dealing with money
Such classes would demistify the global economy
by teaching students the importance of the means of production and how profits are made
The role of cashflow, HR leadership, marketing, and competition would also be studied
In a perfect school system you'd also then study a really big second subject
yourself
Young students would be introduced to the idea that we humans
are extremely prone to misunderstanding ourselves
They would be taken through the concepts of delusion, defensiveness
projection and denial in everyday life
Individual tutors would be on hand to help students towards personality maps
with particular attention paid to their neurosis and fears
Doing this would ensure that students learn a lot
about how complex they truly are
and what types of people they would be best suited to hang out with
A crucial unit would be devoted to career self-knowledge
What job are you best suited to?
Students would spend three hours a week
exploring what they might do with their futures
Then we would sutdy relationships
Being intensely aware of the social and individual cost of every unhappy relationship
An ideal education system would emphasize
the acquisition of skills that help people
to live better together
There would be units on kindness and forgiveness
as well as on anxiety-reduction techniques
In this educational utopia it wouln't only be children who would go to school
but adults as well
Schooling would be for life
Education wouldn't just be taking place in classrooms
media and the arts would be made to maximize their teaching potential
and help to teach people what they actually need to learn
We're so hung up on the challenges of running a massive education system
we're failing to pinpoint the real source of its problems
These are primarily about money, salaries or discipline
These are only a consequence of a more fundamental problem
Right now and with no-one quite meaning for this to happen
we've simply got the wrong curriculum