Reimagining Education: Beyond Basic Knowledge

If you ask what our education system believes everyone should know, you’re really asking: What does society think makes a person useful, functional, and legitimate?

What Education Systems Mandate

Look at what’s required, what’s tested, what determines whether you “pass”:

Mathematics — Everyone must know algebra, geometry, calculus (or at least struggle through them). The system believes: mathematical thinking is fundamental to reasoning, to citizenship, to participation in modern life.

Literacy — Reading and writing in the dominant language. Not just functional literacy, but analysis: interpret this poem, write this essay, identify the theme. The system believes: language mastery equals thinking mastery.

History — Usually national history, told from particular perspectives. Dates, wars, founding fathers. The system believes: you must know where you come from (or at least, the official story of where you come from) to know who you are.

Science — Biology, chemistry, physics. The scientific method. The system believes: understanding how the physical world works is essential knowledge, even if you’ll never use most of it.

Compliance — This one isn’t listed in any curriculum, but it’s taught daily. Sit still. Raise your hand. Follow instructions. Meet deadlines. Accept authority. The system believes: you must learn to function within hierarchical structures.

What’s Conspicuously Missing

Now look at what’s not required, or barely taught:

Financial literacy — How to manage money, understand debt, plan for the future. You can graduate without knowing how a mortgage works or what a 401k is.

Emotional intelligence — How to recognize your feelings, regulate them, communicate them. How to have difficult conversations. How to repair relationships.

Practical life skills — Cooking, basic home repair, first aid, changing a tire. The things you’ll actually need regularly.

Media literacy — How to evaluate sources, recognize propaganda, understand bias. In an age of information overload, we don’t systematically teach discernment.

Civics (real civics) — Not just “how a bill becomes a law” but how to actually participate in democracy. How to organize, protest, advocate. How power actually works.

Philosophy — How to think about meaning, ethics, existence. What makes a good life? What do we owe each other? Mostly absent until college, if then.

Mental health — How common struggles are, how to seek help, how to support others. We’re getting better at this, but it’s still peripheral.

The absence is the message: the system doesn’t believe these things are essential knowledge. Or it believes they’re someone else’s job to teach—the family’s, the church’s, not the state’s.

What This Reveals

Education systems, broadly, believe everyone should know:

How to be economically productive. Math and science for technical work. Literacy for communication. Compliance for employment. The system is preparing workers more than citizens, workers more than whole humans.

How to be culturally literate in the dominant culture. Know the “classics.” Know the national narrative. Share a common reference pool so the society can cohere.

How to defer to expertise. Trust the teacher, the textbook, the authority. Don’t question too much. There are right answers, and experts have them.

How to be measured and sorted. Tests, grades, rankings. The system believes: it’s essential to know where you stand in the hierarchy, to accept being categorized, to compete.

The Philosophical Tension

Here’s what’s strange: education systems claim to prepare you for life, but they prepare you for a very specific life—sitting in rows, following instructions, producing correct answers to someone else’s questions, being evaluated constantly.

They don’t prepare you for:

• The relationships that will actually determine your happiness
• The existential questions you’ll face at 3am
• The moral ambiguity of adult decisions
• The grief, loss, and uncertainty that define much of life
• The freedom and terror of choosing your own path

Education systems believe everyone should know how to function in the system. Which is useful, yes. But it’s a fraction of what you need to actually live well.

What They Should Believe Everyone Should Know

If I could redesign it, I’d say everyone should know:

How to think, not just what to think. Critical thinking, yes, but also creative thinking, systems thinking, philosophical thinking. The ability to question assumptions, including educational ones.

How to be with difficulty. Failure, rejection, uncertainty, loss. These are guaranteed. We should teach people how to move through them rather than avoid them.

How to maintain relationships. Listen well, communicate clearly, repair ruptures, set boundaries, offer and accept help. Most of life’s quality depends on this.

How to find and create meaning. Not impose one meaning, but teach people to ask: What matters to me? What’s worth doing? How do I want to live?

How to care for yourself and others. Physically, mentally, emotionally. How to cook a meal, process an emotion, support someone in crisis, ask for what you need.

How the systems that govern your life actually work. Not just the official structure but the real mechanisms of power, money, influence. How to navigate them, change them, or build alternatives.

How to learn independently. Because most of what you’ll need to know in life, school won’t teach you. The most essential skill is learning how to learn.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Education systems are conservative by design. They reproduce the existing social order, train people for the world as it is (or was), not as it could be.

They believe everyone should know what creates compliant, productive citizens who fit into existing structures.

They don’t believe everyone should know what creates free, critical, creative humans who might question or reimagine those structures.

This isn’t conspiracy—it’s function. Schools reflect society’s values. And society values stability, productivity, and order more than it values liberation, creativity, and transformation.

What do you think everyone should know that schools don’t teach? That gap—between what’s taught and what’s needed—might be the most important curriculum of all.