📚 The Education of the Future: How Do We Learn in a Post-Work Society?

inspired by Carvalho, Iglesias & Ivanov

John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that technological advancement by the end of the century would enable people to work only 15 hours a week. He was mistaken about the timing. But possibly not the trend.

Flash-forward to 2070—what if Keynes’s dream was not a dream, but a blueprint delayed by the inertia of human systems? What happens when artificial intelligence does not just assist work but replaces it altogether? When machines are not just tools—but replacements?

This is the question posed by Carvalho, Iglesias, and Ivanov in their thought-provoking and ambitious paper, Education 2070: A Conceptual Framework. In a section called “The Education of the Future,” the authors don’t just theorise about how we’ll be teaching. They ask a more basic, harder question: why will we be teaching at all?

From Economic Utility to Existential Purpose

For most of the last century, the education system has functioned like a factory assembly line. Students come in at one end—raw, uncertain—and go out at the other—credentialed, specialist, job-ready. The educational machinery has always been geared to economic productivity: how do we make young people productive in the labour force?

But what if the job market itself disappears—or becomes so completely changed that human labour is no longer required—then what?

The authors propose that education needs to break free from work. In this future they envision, education is no longer preparation for work, but for wisdom. It is an activity not of utility but of human flourishing. That is, we can cease to ask, “What job will this prepare me for?” and start to ask, “What kind of person will I become?”

The Optimist’s Wager

It would be easy—and perhaps more fashionable—to paint the future as dystopian. A world where machines rule supreme, and humans are made redundant, anxious, and irrelevant. But the authors take a different approach: optimism.

They present three potential futures. One is dystopian—characterised by widespread joblessness and social collapse. Another is anaesthetizing—a civilisation sedated by screens and a universal basic income. But the third is otherwise. In this one, automation frees us. With survival no longer a daily struggle, humans are free to pursue meaning, creativity, and connection.

This is not naive, they maintain. It’s necessary. Only in this third scenario does education remain relevant. In the first two, schools can become obsolete or manipulative. In the third, they are vital—a place where we learn to live deeply, not merely function adequately.

The Return of Human Subjects

In this reimagined future of education, the curriculum changes dramatically. STEM, though still significant, no longer dominates. The human sciences take center stage instead: philosophy, ethics, literature, the arts.

Why? Because these are the fields that grapple with meaning. They pose the questions no algorithm can. What is justice? What is beauty? What does it mean to be alive?

Gert Biesta, a philosopher of education, the authors mention, names this aspect of learning subjectification—becoming a person, rather than a performer. It’s a term that sounds odd in a world that quantifies everything, but it may be the idea that redeems us.

What Machines Can’t Teach

Artificial intelligence is already changing classrooms. It can individualise instruction, grade papers, simulate environments, and even tutor students one-on-one. Yet it can’t teach us how to forgive. Or how to fall in love. Or how to behave when nobody’s watching.

It cannot lead a student through sorrow. Or make them perceive irony within a poem. It cannot assist us in perceiving contradictions or realising when to disregard the rules. These are human abilities. And they are the most vital we possess.

What Teachers Must Do Now

If we are earnest about this future, then the teacher’s work is changed. The classroom is no longer a rehearsal space for economic life—it is a workshop for ethical and emotional life. Teachers are designers of identity and community.

This implies a re-prioritization. Less focus on content delivery, more on meaning-making. Less concern with model answers, more grappling with challenging questions. Less hierarchy, more conversation.

Today’s teacher might still prepare students for tests. Tomorrow’s teacher prepares them for uncertainty. 

The Subtle Power of Possibility

What is so striking about Education 2070 is not just its vision, but its wager. The authors are wagering that in a world ruled by automation, the highest lasting value will not be technical skill—but human nuance. They’re betting, in other words, that education is going to matter more, not less. But just if we change what we believe it’s for. And thus, we are presented with a fundamental and pressing question: to organize an education system not around the economy we have—but the humanity we want to sustain.