In 2038, the world will ask your child who they are. Will they know?

If you saw my social post a couple of days ago, you'll know I spoke about the two thousand, three hundred and forty days a child spends in a classroom during their schooling life.

It’s a staggering number when you stop and think about it.

For more than a century, school has been like a machine. A system designed to mass-produce workers for a factory-driven world. It’s efficient. Predictable. Built to teach obedience, repetition, and conformity.

(it's true - if you've never looked into the birth of formal education, from its Prussian roots, watch this video by Salman Khan and Michael Noer - it's really quite interesting).

And for a long time, the machine worked.

The world needed people who could fit neatly into the system. People who could follow instructions, meet deadlines, and perform the same tasks as everyone else.

But what happens when the world changes, and the machine doesn’t?

A five-year-old starting school today will graduate in 2038. And the world they’ll step into absolutely will not ask them to sit still, follow instructions, or fit in. It won’t care if they aced their standardised tests or ticked all the right boxes.

It will ask them to solve problems we don’t yet have names for. To think creatively. To adapt to change. To find new ways of working, creating, and living.

But how do they learn to do any of that if they’ve spent two thousand days being shaped by a system built for a world that no longer exists?

You can’t learn creativity by following a script.
You can’t build confidence by being measured to one standard against every other child.
And you can’t become adaptable by staying in line.

Two thousand days is a very long time to spend learning how to fit into a world that’s already gone.

And here’s the part that hits hardest for me: it’s not just what children miss in those two thousand days. It’s what they start to lose.

The curiosity that makes them ask why.
The courage to think differently.
The trust in their own ideas.

Instead, they start believing that success is following instructions, that progress is keeping up with the group, that learning is about someone else’s answers instead of their own questions.

And that’s why those two thousand days matter - not as time to spend fitting into someone else’s machine, but as a chance to build something of their own. A chance to ask their own questions. To follow their ideas. To try, fail, and try again. To grow into someone who trusts themselves enough to walk their own path.

Because the future won’t care how neatly they fit into the old system. It will want to know how they can contribute to building the new one.

Two thousand, three hundred and forty days. So...what's your child going to do with them?

Talk soon,
Issy