The current education system is becoming obsolete. It was ideal to meet the needs of the age of industrialization. However, the past two decades have seen tremendous changes due to the advent of the Internet. In the age of globalization, the future consists of challenges humans have yet to face: population increases, resource scarcities, and the abundance of readily available information. These issues are calling for a new way to educate, one where students are not just fed information, but taught to be leaders equipped with both the appetite and cross-disciplinary skills to solve the above problems. With rising tuition and student loans, and lingering high unemployment rate, students are increasingly invested in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). On the other hand, schools need a better feedback system for the teachers. According to Bill Gates, “Until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: Satisfactory. If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was ‘satisfactory,’ I would have no hope of ever getting better.” While education researchers are foreseeing a major disruption in the sector, political leaders and education reformists have yet to find the best fix for the system. The speakers in the following TED talks show us why addressing the issue of inflation in academic degrees is not just a passing problem, but a wakeup call for educators to nurture today’s youth, as they are the solution to tomorrow’s problems. President Obama and the leaders of many other nations are realizing a need to embrace this transition, and the following TED talks give us an insight into what the future of education should look like.

Where will the schools of the future be located? – Dr. Sugata Mitra

“In the Cloud,” according to educational researcher Dr. Sugata Mitra. Dr. Mitra’s research explains the neuroscience behind why the system of punishment and examination prevents us from enjoying the process of learning:  “The education system is not broken,” he adds, “It is wonderfully constructed. It’s just that we don’t need it anymore.”  Through the awakening of his Hole in the Wall experiment, he advocates that educators send children to an intellectual adventure.

Who will the teachers be? – Salman Khan

In this talk, the former hedge fund analyst tells us how he began posting math videos to help his cousin, which eventually lead to the founding of the Khan Academy. Through his remarkable videos he has helped millions of students from all different backgrounds learn topics which they struggled to learn in a traditional school setting. Instead of a one size fits all teaching system, he believes in the “paradigm in which teachers are armed with as much data as possible” in order to find out what level of support each student needs.

Why don’t we get the best out of people? – Sir Ken Robinson

Creativity expert, Sir Ken Robinson, argues it is because “our mind has been mined the way we strict mine the earth for a particular commodity.” He suggests we should rather “wisely cultivate creativity and acknowledge the various types of intelligence.” He observed that nowadays kids with degrees are often heading home to play their video games because their degrees are no longer sufficient to meet market demand. To get the best out of people we need to realize “creativity now is as important in education as literacy” and reconstitute our conception of human ecology. He believes we should teach children through aesthetics, not with anesthetics.

Where will the fastest growing young population be and what challenges will they face? – Charles Leadbeater

Researcher Charles Leadbeater points out most of the population growth in the next 50 years will be in inner city slums in developing nation creating a new educational challenge. He speaks of a boy who found schools boring and got into drug dealing, but was fortunately saved by technology that made learning fun and accessible. The biggest challenge of these places is not to learn the facts but to stay alive. Charles noted, “Radical innovation often comes from where there is huge need,” and he highlights some of the amazing innovations that social entrepreneurship can generate.

What purpose do sites, like Coursera.com serve? – Daphne Koller

Daphne Koller, the founder, tells the audience what happens when college courses are made accessible and customizable. The site provides individuals from diverse backgrounds and locations not only a world-class university curriculum but also allows students to collaborate in a variety of ways. In this talk, she shares the techniques that are helping students to learn better and educators to discover the best ways to teach. In her words, sites like Coursera can “establish education as a fundamental human right, where anyone around the world with the ability and the motivation could get the skills that they need to make a better life for themselves, their families and their communities.”

What does every child need? – Rita F. Pierson

While technology can reduce pressure and stress on teachers, the role of the teacher will be still significant, because teaching does not merely entail just giving a lesson. Rita Pierson, an educator of 40 years explains “Every child deserves a champion — an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.”

What does it mean to be a genius? – Elizabeth Gilbert

In this talk, Elizabeth Gilbert speaks of the sources of creativity and how to create a “psychological construct to protect you from the results of your work.” Society feeds us fear rather than encouragement, especially those in creative fields, and Elizabeth encourages those to keep showing up, “doing what you are meant to do,” and how to deal with fear.

Why is liberal art education not what it should have been? – Liz Coleman

Liz Coleman, president of Bennington College, calls for a reform in the education system. She advocates true inter-disciplinary education to solve our biggest problems. She draws attention to the fact that the “hard choices are not between good and evil but between competing goods,” and political leaders like “Obama and his team simply cannot do it alone.”

What are the economics of education? – Bill Gates

In this talk, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and philanthropist, goes behind the scene in to the economics of the U.S. education system. State budgets are filled with accounting tricks that hide the true cost of government spending, raise the deficit, and consequently affect the budget for education. However, he believes the problem is solvable because “The U.S. is a great country with lots of people. And its investment in the young is what makes us great.”

What qualities should leaders, especially of the future, possess? – Patrick Awuah

Patrick Awuah, former Microsoft employee and cofounder of a Ghanaian university, shares his journey and how societies can benefit from good leadership. He points out education does not only entail feedback. Although he speaks about Africa, he goes beyond its borders and stresses the importance of creating leaders for the future. He believes the future “depends on inspired leadership,” and that “every society must be very intentional about how it trains its leaders.”

The Future Belongs To Those Who Prepare For Today

As Sir Ken Robinson pointed out, we would not have known Shakespeare if his school system hadn’t found his writing absurd and tried to mold him according to convention. Children are born with infinite curiosity and the lack fear to use it. The new system should be about “letting learning happen instead of making it happen,” as Dr. Sugata Mitra puts it, by honing the diverse and dynamic intelligence. In the words of Malcolm X, “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today,” and we need a new method of preparation.

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