Let me start with the cliché opening: education is the foundation of everything. Education is the solution to all problems.
Of course, when you say this, reactions come immediately. Not everyone can be educated, not everyone wants to be educated, it’s not as easy as you think. And that, in fact, is the core of the problem. And also the problem of education itself.
In my opinion, the biggest problem of the 21st century is neither global warming, nor wars, nor populism. On the contrary, our biggest problem is that for the first time in human history, information is this accessible, abundant, uncensored, and yet more worthless than ever. Yes, information is worthless. It is useless. Because there is no difference between correct information and incorrect information. And there is no mental infrastructure capable of evaluating it.
Expertise means nothing. Because everything an expert says is considered censorship. Meanwhile, non-experts bend information however they want. With enough advertising, they can reach more people than experts and convince people of whatever they wish.
In such an environment, our education system is still based on an industrial-revolution-era model. A system that tries to standardize everyone, force them into molds, and dictates that you must know things the way the state wants. Yet access to information is so easy that it takes seconds to realize that state education curricula are trash.
So what do we do?
A child can learn astrophysics, software, or engineering from YouTube and unlimited online education platforms. Maybe by the time they reach high school, they could even be capable of building the world’s best artificial intelligence, and they wouldn’t need to be extraordinarily intelligent to do it. The technological side of this is that learning has been democratized. But even this democratization is an illusion. Because if you pay attention, the child needs internet access and a computer. Maybe even paid subscriptions to certain platforms. Today, many schools can’t or won’t even provide this. For many families, these things don’t even cross their minds.
Most of us ignore this inequality and still claim we are well educated. Can you see the fundamental problems of the education we received?
So the real question is: If a child can learn knowledge on their own, what should the purpose of school be?
As we can see from the example above, the most important thing technology cannot and will not do is develop social skills. In other words, school should teach people through people; it should teach how to live together, develop empathy, reveal potential, instill critical thinking, support creativity, and create a bond with nature. It should be a laboratory that provides all of this.
Yet in today’s world, in many places, the hierarchy is still: principal at the top, teachers in the middle, and children at the bottom. Even though parents and students have moved slightly upward…
There are still standardized exams, standardized lessons, standardized ideologies, ideological teaching, and standardized future dreams. If I had a child, I wouldn’t want them to say “I want to be a doctor” or “I want to be an engineer.” Because children are not standard. Society is not standard. Living together does not mean being standard, and the future will not be standard either. Yet we force everything into molds and then ask why society is so polarized and full of hatred. Even people we see on TV whom we think are open-minded can’t overcome the internal brakes they have. Because they don’t know what openness is. They see themselves as the ones who grant rights and set limits. Everyone should be equal, everyone should be free—but only the way I want, only as much as I allow. “We gave you this right, what more do you want?” Society, meanwhile, sees granted rights as favors and supports either limited freedom and consumerist modernism, or the opposite: closed, “be like me or die” ideas.
Humanity’s greatest need is a new education system. An open-minded, empathy-centered, free, creative, nature-connected, potential-focused, and democratic system. (And we also need to change our understanding of democracy. We must see democracy not as an absolute truth, but as an evolving and developing system. Otherwise, we won’t move a single step beyond Ancient Greece.)
- Learning to Live Together
The biggest problem societies face today is not refugees, population issues, or demography. The biggest problem is hatred, polarization, prejudice, and lack of empathy. Take a refugee child who migrates and starts school. A child who is aggressive, misunderstood, and excluded by classmates and teachers. The reason is that no one wants to deal with them; they are seen as disrupting order. I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to refugees’ stories, but when I listened to the story of a family I helped, I was shocked, it was beyond anything I could imagine. The life experience of a 6–7-year-old child was more than everything you could read in books. Deaths, hunger, kidnapping, abuse, beatings, violence, imprisonment, nearly freezing to death… And we expect such a child to adapt to their new life. Without properly teaching the language, without providing comfort, while criticizing even their basic human needs, excluding them. And when they want to feel a little normal, people become cruel enough to say, “They supposedly don’t have money for food, but they bought those shoes.”
I think this is a huge education problem. Schools must answer the question: “How does one human understand another?” They should focus on conflict resolution skills, emotional awareness, understanding different cultures, awareness of equality and justice, prejudice awareness, nonviolent communication, listening skills, self-expression, and adapting to people from different backgrounds. You could skip teaching addition, subtraction, derivatives, or integrals. If you can’t be human, none of those matter.
As long as these skills are not developed, society will always be fragile, democracy will always be under threat, and relationships will always remain tense. No external force is needed. The absence of these skills is more than enough to tear society apart.
2. Schools Should Not Be Hierarchical Structures but Living Communities
Traditional model:
Ministry -> Principal -> Teacher -> Student -> Parent
Even though things have changed a bit in recent years, this structure still exists. What we call change is merely chaos resulting from roles being stretched. It’s actually proof that the system doesn’t work.
I cannot accept a teacher saying, “I didn’t know about the family’s situation.” It feels impossible for humans to develop like this. And society can’t progress either.
The Reggio Emilia approach, Summerhill, Sudbury schools, and especially Finland’s education system that applies these models show that schools can be self-organizing communities. Didn’t civilizations develop this way? Didn’t we self-organize?
Teachers could be guides rather than bosses. Guides on how to learn, and when necessary, how to mediate. Similarly, principals should act more like project coordinators rather than bureaucrats. Parents should definitely be part of the process and proactive members of the community.
Students should have partial control over their learning. They should learn by touching, hearing, listening, moving, and observing, and discover countless opportunities, learning styles, and ways of expressing themselves through interaction with other children. With commands like “don’t talk,” “sit still,” and “now speak,” and classrooms confined to four walls, it’s impossible to get anywhere in today’s world.
This way, children can learn responsibility, participation, discussion, respect, respect for others’ space, conflict resolution, and working toward a common goal—not through directives and rigid right-wrong distinctions, but by directly experiencing, experimenting, and collectively discovering their own rights and wrongs.
Of course, objections arise: small populations, who will deal with this, is it really that easy? But dozens of people consciously or unconsciously apply these ideas. The teachers I remember fondly also applied similar approaches, even if unintentionally. So all of this is actually possible.
3. The Role of School Is Not to Provide a Profession!
Is there anyone who says, “I applied what I learned in school directly when I started my profession”? If so, they’re lucky. Usually, professions are learned on the job. No matter how much is taught at school, much of what’s learned doesn’t align with professional reality. So seeing schools as places to teach professions is meaningless.
In high school, I learned trigonometry, integrals, and derivatives—the three foundational concepts of engineering. They were useful, but I think I could have learned them at university. In fact, many people only truly understand them then.
Something else caught my attention: professions like medicine, engineering, law, and architecture are nothing like we imagined beforehand. We grew up dreaming of them as if no other options existed. The reason is purely economic. Then we convinced ourselves we were inclined toward them, that we loved them, that they were our dreams. When this is taught from childhood, it’s impossible for children or parents to imagine alternatives. For years, they say “you can be anything,” but then reduce the options in schools to just a handful. In other words, they dull our dreams.
This is more common in developing countries. In poorer countries, people must be creative just to survive. The professions mentioned above are wonderful if you can reach them—but reaching them requires economic power. In developed countries, these jobs are often dismissed with “let smart people do it.” If I want to do what I love, why waste time studying to be a carpenter, for example? In developing countries, these used to be promising professions that made money. That’s no longer the case.
This approach destroys individual happiness. It’s like believing in an empty dream and then being devastated when it doesn’t come true. It also kills society’s creative capacity.
Yet there are so many areas one could gravitate toward:
sports, art, science, nature, design, music, psychology, philosophy, handicrafts, technical trades, leadership, and countless other fields. Some don’t make money, but that’s due to the absurd design of society. If education supported these and we abandoned standardization, we could stop creating economic disadvantages. To make a meaningless product, nature is destroyed, air is polluted, dozens of people labor, machines are built… The engineer doing the job can earn enormous amounts of money. Meanwhile, the person fighting the destruction and trying to restore nature works for barely enough to survive. Does this seem like a healthy system to you?
The core of Montessori, PBL, and Reggio Emilia models is this: explore, try, feel, produce, observe, and find your path. This also increases awareness across other areas.
Current systems are the exact opposite. Different fields have no relation to each other. States stuck in 19th-century thinking see these ideas as threats and go beyond not supporting them—they cut existing support. This pushes education further into blindness. The sole purpose is to maintain power.
But the future will not be created by grumpy men over 50, but by dreaming children. Therefore, children must be free to discover their dreams.
4. Technology Can Replace Knowledge, But Never Humanity
We already talked about this. A teacher who wants to teach can make themselves visible online, even do one-on-one Q&A sessions. I even think the distinction between researchers and instructors in academia should also exist in schools.
The teacher’s role should emphasize guidance, coaching, observation, inspiration, emotional support, and brainstorming. Instead of creating a curriculum plan that AI can generate in five minutes, teachers should plan for children facing inequality of opportunity, think about how to include students who don’t learn well under the current model, find support for children struggling with gender identity, help children make peace with their bodies, and think about how to include minority groups.
In other words, the teacher’s job should be to teach empathy, conscience, culture, and living together, and to make these lived experiences.
5. Creativity
When you hear creativity, don’t think of art class, because I don’t think art classes were inclusive at all. They were more like lessons on what art is not and how to marginalize students.
Creativity is more about survival skills and expressing oneself authentically.
The future is full of massive problems: climate crisis, social collapse, economic transformations, technological revolutions, migration movements, cultural conflicts. If listening to these feels like torture for students, something is wrong. And if they’re brushed over briefly, that’s also wrong.
That’s exactly why we need creative minds. Creative thinking develops through open-ended projects, applications, design, model-making, prototyping, interdisciplinary production, allowing mistakes, supporting risky ideas, and integrating science, art, and technology. It develops through problem-solving. Telling a child “no, you drew it wrong” doesn’t just kill creativity—it plants authoritarian ideas.
In fact, everything drawn on paper is art. Every shape created. The abstract as much as the concrete.
Waldorf’s art-centered approach, Reggio’s expressive tools, and PBL’s project-based structure are examples of this type of education. Finland’s interdisciplinary focus and Forest School projects emphasizing nature experiences are also examples.
6. Critical Thinking
I spoke with a Senegalese refugee. He has no formal education, only primary school. He speaks several languages, mostly learned through necessity while migrating. His worldview and awareness surpassed many educated people I know.
If he were in the U.S., he would be labeled unintelligent for not attending school. He would be stuck in that category, working jobs that reinforced it.
The world is full of manipulation, prejudice, and misinformation. Words box our minds in. In this age, literacy is not just reading. Reading dozens of books doesn’t make you educated. Thinking itself is education.
Every individual must be able to process information.
What does a news story really say, and what does it hide? What is the purpose of this information? Who benefits from this narrative? What does the statistic actually show, and how can it be manipulated? Why has the future become something to fear? Why and how is information distorted? Is authority always right? Why should ideas be questioned? What are the limits of your own thinking? Why do you think this way?
Schools must teach this—but especially the question “Is authority always right?” seems to explain why it isn’t taught.
If you ask me, states have lost all meaning. The global drift toward autocracy, conservatism, and primitive thinking exists because states support it—just like churches that hid books, or empires that kept people ignorant. Some go so far as to cut off access to information, ban what they dislike, and demonize it. That’s why education has become a target and ideologically driven even in developed countries.
Without critical thinking, democracy has no chance of surviving.
7. Human History Should Be Taught as a Shared Story, Not a National One
For years, we listened to stories of “us” and “the enemies.” We accepted our values as absolute and others as wrong. It became “us versus them.” Even today, we continue this mistake with portraits and flags during national holidays. Because we think in terms of “us” against “them.”
For the past 20 years, the opposite has happened. “Us” and “them” have switched places, but the story is the same.
This isn’t unique to Turkey—it’s global. “Us” and “them.” Replace the words however you like; nothing changes. They’re always wrong, we’re always right.
But human history isn’t like that. Ideas have no borders. They travel across continents, science flows from one nation to another, and humanity advances together. Languages, cultures, and migrations follow one another and blend. That blend creates culture.
Civilizations have always risen and fallen for the same reasons. Inequality, corruption, intolerance, environmental collapse, and othering have destroyed even the greatest civilizations.
The fact that we’ve lived through the most peaceful period in world history over the last 50 years is for the same reason: after massive destruction, we were forced to meet on shared values.
Therefore, peace is impossible without global awareness. History must be taught as a whole—not as national myths, but as a shared human story. Only then can we free ourselves from the imaginary borders and the hatred and primitive prejudices we call values.
8. Nature Must Be a Fundamental Part of Education
One of the things proven by Forest Schools and Scandinavian models is the benefits of nature-based education: self-confidence, problem-solving, mental health, ecological awareness, physical development, creativity, and resilience.
One unforgettable memory from primary school is when our teacher took us outside and taught the lesson under a tree. Everyone was more engaged than ever—we listened while laughing and enjoying ourselves. I’ll never forget that feeling of freedom.
9. Democracy Is Learned Not from Books, but from Daily School Life
Democracy must be learned through experience, not theory. You can talk about democracy all day, and it won’t mean anything. We already see this in schools. Vote, let the majority become class president, let them snitch on everyone, and let the teacher intervene as authority. Sound familiar? Yes—today’s Turkey.
I don’t think we need to blame any individual or ideology. Democracy in Turkey has been implemented exactly the way it was taught in schools.
Criticizing the teacher’s display of authority was also a crime. Why? Because the teacher knew better. It was for our own good. Sound familiar? Isn’t that how the country was founded? Didn’t they say “for the people, despite the people”? Then why do we hate an ideology that imposes its own truth today? A system applied exactly as it was taught.
It could have been taught differently. Shared decision-making, rules decided by vote, everyone having a voice regardless of majority, valuing the right to object and protest instead of meaningless sacred values, student councils with real power, working groups to discuss problems together.
The systems we admire today have partially achieved this. But the education we received prevents us from accepting it. Because blaming is the skill we learned best.
Democracy is not a system—it’s a behavior. Not a lesson, but an experience.
10. Turkish and German Education Models
Although I’ve criticized it between the lines, I want to be more explicit.
The Turkish education system is very far from the models mentioned. It is extremely centralized, highly ideological, and inflexible. Teacher autonomy is extremely limited. Student freedom is uncontrolled. Parent participation exists mainly for blaming. The similarity with the past is parental distance from education.
It’s hard to talk about equality in education. Teacher prestige is almost nonexistent. Autonomy exists only through individual teacher effort—and even then, it’s something that gets reported when it stands out.
The system is exam-oriented and bound to a rigid curriculum. Contrary to the models described, it is authoritarian and does everything it can to kill creativity. Teachers who haven’t broadened their minds through personal effort are often closed-minded—or act that way out of fear. Naturally, the inspiration they can give students is limited or hidden.
Topics like climate crisis, migration waves, earthquakes, natural disasters, biological and ecological awareness exist in the curriculum only because they’re trendy. Often, even the teachers don’t understand or care about them. And they’re not important in the exam system anyway. Their scientific accuracy is also questionable.
The system’s strong side is its heavy theoretical focus. Many concepts are taught at a young age. While claiming “national science,” technical capacity develops independently of actual science. That’s why there are many successful but empathy-deficient individuals—or people good in their fields but disconnected from the world, or those who interpret everything through a “we are the best” ego.
The weaknesses are clear: lack of empathy, awareness, critical thinking; exam-stressed, depressed youth; burned-out teachers; everyone losing faith; wasted potential; a society whose success criteria are money and “good” professions, leading to dead self-confidence; a society disconnected from the world—and social inequality on top of all that.
Germany isn’t very good either, although I find it strong in social sciences. There are places experimenting with creative models. The system is centralized, with curricula determined by states. Some try the Finnish model, but it’s not widespread. Autonomy generally exists, but students are separated early—both professionally and skill-wise. This is considered a flawed application of the Finnish model. The system is generally focused on localization and vocational training.
School democracy and practices focused on revealing potential are limited. General culture, nature awareness, and social awareness are high due to rigorous teacher training. However, recent political developments—budget cuts and similar issues—may undermine this. Anti-education trends exist here too.
Current strengths:
High teacher professionalism, strong vocational training and apprenticeship models, skilled workers across fields, a reliable and predictable system. Extremely high sensitivity to children’s rights. Strong psychological counseling for children. Early and strong nature education from kindergarten onward.
Weaknesses:
Children are tracked at age 10, limiting social mobility and life paths. Integration of migrant children is difficult. Creativity is often secondary. The system is heavy and inflexible. Project culture is limited. Compared to Turkey, it is more teacher-centered. Inequality of opportunity exists, though less visible. Intelligence is often assumed through math and physics, and success chances are higher for wealthier families—creating pressure on low-income students during high school.
In short, the German model sits somewhere between Finland and Turkey.
11. Proposed Model
I believe the ideal model is a hybrid. One that instills the values discussed above, is self-organizing, potential-focused, connected to nature and empathy, yet realistic.
For those interested, some applied or emerging models include: Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emilia, Finland, PBL (High Tech), Democratic Schools, IB, Forest Schools, Sudbury Schools, and Summerhill Schools.
Conclusion
To summarize, the future is not just about technology—honestly, not about technology at all. More important than technology are empathy, creativity, critical thinking, community awareness, nature awareness, intercultural understanding, and democratic participation. Without these, technological advances will bring nothing but war.
Therefore, education should not aim to provide professions, impose thought patterns, or produce uniform citizens. Instead of passive, fearful, obedient individuals, it should raise original, aware, democratic, emotionally strong, nature-connected, creative individuals.
The world is moving in the opposite direction. The reason is our education system moving in the opposite direction. Are we ready to change this? It’s already changing organically, but more effort is needed. First, we must question our values and accept that the world has changed. Then we must share our awareness.
I am hopeful about the future because the problems we face are inevitably pushing us toward different paths. I hope we can achieve this mental transformation without writing the bloodiest pages of history.
bahadirhancicek 
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