Posted on December 10, 2025

By Olivia Odileke

Here's a question worth sitting with: What is the purpose of formal education?

Not the mission statement hanging in your school's front office. Not the talking points from the last staff meeting. I'm asking what you believe, in your bones, education is actually for.

Because here's what's wild—most of us have never really stopped to answer that question for ourselves. We inherited a system built during the Industrial Revolution, designed to prepare workers for factory lines and compliance-based labor. And while the world has fundamentally transformed, the structure of schooling has remained largely the same.

We're still organizing learning into 45-minute blocks. Still sorting students by age rather than readiness. Still measuring success through standardized assessments that value recall over critical thinking. Still operating as if the main goal is to transmit information—even though information is now instantly accessible to anyone with a phone.

The question isn't whether this system worked once. It did, for a specific purpose, in a specific era.

The question is: Does it serve the world our students are actually walking into?

The Mismatch We're Living With

Our students are inheriting a world defined by complexity—climate uncertainty, rapid technological change, polarized information ecosystems, and challenges that don't fit neatly into subject-area boxes. They need to think critically, collaborate across difference, adapt to ambiguity, and create solutions that don't exist yet.

And yet, so much of schooling still centers on individual performance, right answers, and compliance.

I'm not saying teachers aren't aware of this gap. Most educators I know are acutely, painfully aware. They're innovating in the margins—sneaking in project-based learning, building relationships that matter, creating space for student voice despite the constraints.

But here's what I keep coming back to: What if we stopped innovating around the edges and started questioning the foundation?

What Would Change If We Started From a Different Question?

Instead of asking "How do we get students to master this content?"—what if we asked:

• How do we help students become the kind of people who can navigate uncertainty?
• How do we cultivate curiosity that sustains itself beyond a grade?
• How do we build learning communities where students develop the capacity to think critically, collaborate authentically, and contribute to something larger than themselves?

These aren't pie-in-the-sky ideals. These are urgent, practical questions about what education should be doing right now.

And here's the uncomfortable truth: answering them requires us to let go of some deeply embedded assumptions about what school is supposed to look like.

This Isn't About Burning It All Down

I'm not advocating for chaos. I'm not suggesting we abandon structure, rigor, or accountability.

But I am suggesting that we need educators who are willing to ask hard questions about why we do what we do—and whether it's actually serving students or just maintaining a system.

Because the shift from Industrial-Era education to something more human-centered, more adaptive, more aligned with the world we're living in? That doesn't happen through policy alone. It happens through educators who are willing to see themselves as architects of change rather than implementers of someone else's blueprint.

Where This Starts

It starts with you giving yourself permission to question.

To ask whether the way you've always done something is still the way it should be done. To experiment with structures that put student agency at the center. To have honest conversations with your colleagues about what's working and what's not—without the pretense that everything is fine.

It starts with recognizing that you have more power than you think. Not to overhaul everything overnight, but to make intentional decisions about what you prioritize, what you question, and what you're willing to let go of in service of something better.

The purpose of formal education isn't fixed. It's never been fixed. It's been negotiated, debated, and reshaped by the people doing the work.

So here's my question for you: What do you believe education should be preparing students for?

And once you've answered that—what's one thing you could shift, even slightly, to move closer to that vision?

Because changing education doesn't start with permission from above.

It starts with educators who are brave enough to ask better questions.