We’re taught to believe that education is the key to growth — a system designed to help young minds think, create, and solve the problems of the future. But in reality, school often does the opposite. Not because teachers are failing, but because the system is built to control, not to inspire. From the moment kids enter school, they’re placed in a world of constant guidance. Everything is structured, timetabled, and explained. Every lesson is handed down with a right way to do it, and a wrong way to avoid. Pupils are told what to focus on, how to solve problems, and even how to think about those problems. And while this seems helpful on the surface, it quietly erases something essential: the space to figure things out for themselves.
We think we’re making learning easier, but we’re actually making it shallow. By constantly giving answers, tips, and marking criteria, we remove the need for pupils to think independently. They start to believe that every challenge comes with a step-by-step solution. And over time, this mindset takes root — the belief that progress always comes from following directions. But the real world isn’t like that. Life rarely gives us clear instructions. Innovation certainly doesn’t. The most important breakthroughs — in science, technology, art, and culture — come from people who think differently, who challenge the system, who experiment, and who aren’t afraid to get it wrong.
As our society advances, our education system clings even harder to outdated models. More exams, more structure, more pressure to perform in narrow ways. But the result is a generation that can pass assessments but struggles to create anything new. We’re raising young people who wait to be told what to do, rather than ask what needs to be done. And that’s the true failure of this system: not in what it teaches, but in what it prevents.
So what if we removed the guide altogether? Imagine an education system with no teachers in the traditional sense. No lectures. No step-by-step explanations. Just resources — books, tools, challenges, information — and a room full of pupils tasked with figuring it all out. They would have to collaborate, fail, build, adapt, and discover their own paths. There would be chaos at first. Confusion. Frustration. But eventually, something far more valuable would emerge: real thinking. Real learning. The kind that doesn’t rely on being told what to do, but instead is driven by necessity, curiosity, and trial and error.
In that space, pupils would build their own ways of solving problems. They’d innovate not because someone asked them to, but because they had no other choice. They would become independent thinkers, not passive learners. And that shift — from being taught to teaching themselves — is what truly prepares someone for the future. Because creativity, problem-solving, and leadership don’t come from being over-guided. They come from being forced to think freely, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Until we’re ready to stop schooling kids to conform, we’ll keep producing more of the same. But if we’re bold enough to step back and let them struggle, they might just learn to build something better than we ever imagined.