We Are Preparing Generations for Yesterday’s World

Education is still framed in Estonian and European political rhetoric as a “public service” that the state must organize and fund. This approach may sound right – even noble. But at its core, it is an outdated paradigm that threatens not only the future of our children, but also the long-term competitiveness and resilience of our societies.

This article is an expanded and updated version of a piece I originally published on Medium, adapted here for the AI for Developing Countries community.

The World Is Changing Faster Than the System Can Adapt

We live in an era where artificial intelligence, automation, and massive information flows reshape skills and labor markets not every decade, but every month. Yet most education systems still operate on slow, bureaucratic cycles: curricula that update infrequently, teacher training programs rooted in the past, governance models built for a pre-digital era.

This means we are preparing today’s children for yesterday’s world – without knowing what tomorrow will bring. And not only do we lack the knowledge, we also lack the real capability to respond, because the public education system is structurally too rigid.

Public Service = Rigidity, Slowness, Compromises

Education as a “public service” is built around stability, control, and standardization: all children learn the same program, at the same pace, by age group. These values may be socially important, but they also make the system uniform, slow, and resistant to innovation.

Meanwhile, real life demands something entirely different: creativity, adaptability, critical thinking, collaboration with AI, and lifelong learning.

In the age of AI, we don’t need a system that produces “average” people, but an ecosystem that develops each person’s unique strengths. A uniform public system, however well intentioned, simply cannot do this — because its obligation is to be equal, controllable, predictable, and therefore safe and standardized.

We Are Investing in the Wrong Place

Economists like James Heckman have long proven that investments in early childhood development generate the highest returns for society — up to 13x ROI. Yet education is still not treated as an economic sector, but rather as an expense line in the state budget. It’s seen as a service, which the private sector is not expected to provide, and where choices for the child are made behind closed doors in the public sector.

The result?

• We do not make educational decisions based on economic principles.

• We do not measure outcomes, innovation, or impact on GDP.

• We do not treat teachers as key builders of human capital.

• We do not systematically evaluate what works and what does not.

Yes, we have PISA results — they tell us children can solve math and reading problems. But PISA does not tell us whether young people are ready for continuous reskilling, creative work, collaboration with AI, or navigating complex global realities.

It does not assess long-term human capital development, societal resilience, or well-being.

The Solution Is Not Privatization — but Rethinking Education

I am not arguing that everything should become fee-based or that markets alone can solve the challenges of education. Rather, I am saying that it is time to rethink education as a strategic economic sector, not merely a public service.

A modern education system should:

• support human development from birth onward,

• use AI and data to personalize learning at scale,

• empower teachers with technology and insight,

• give families meaningful agency and choice,

• measure learning continuously and transparently,

• adapt as fast as the world changes.

We already have the tools to do this.
What we lack is the willingness to shift mindset:
to see education not as a cost, but as an investment in national resilience, innovation, and human potential.

If Education Remains Only a Public Service, Our Children Will Be Left Behind

If we keep designing education around the needs of the system rather than the needs of the child, we will continue producing generations who are structurally unprepared for the world they must navigate.

And this is not a distant risk.
The cost of inaction grows every year — economically, socially, and morally.

Education is not just important.
Education is the economy of the future.

And every day that we fail to recognize this in practice increases the risk to our children, our society, and our collective future.