The true goal of education should be to prepare students for life—to equip them with the curiosity, capacity, and character to lead meaningful, resilient, and adaptable lives. Cultivate an ability to reinvent themselves with ease while keeping their core self intact, whatever the circumstances.
However, most formal education systems remain narrowly focused on livelihood (learning to earn), which is merely a subset of this larger purpose. Even within this limited scope, education often fails to deliver, primarily because curricula lag behind the rapidly evolving demands of the workplace – the fast pace of knowledge accretion and ever-changing set of skills required to thrive.
Take, for instance, the advent of artificial intelligence—a transformative force across all domains. The judicious and ethical use of AI is already a crucial skill, yet it remains conspicuously absent or under-discussed in most school curricula. This disconnect highlights a systemic inertia in aligning education with emerging realities.
To bridge this gap, I believe that the most meaningful learning outcomes should include:
1. Yearning to Learn
A deep, intrinsic desire to learn—not for marks, rewards, peer or parental pressure but for the sheer joy, empowerment, and sense of fulfillment that learning brings. In a world overflowing with easily accessible information and learning tools, the role of schools and teachers must evolve from delivering knowledge to inspiring curiosity. Students should leave school not with the finality of learning, but with the spark to continue a yearning for learning for a lifetime.
2. Learning to Learn
After kindling curiosity, teachers (and parents) must empower students with the skills and a mindset to learn independently and effectively. This includes:
- Building resilience and grit —mental fitness for being ever-ready to embark on learning adventures, given the pitfalls and highs that come with such adventures, all life long.
- Developing meta-cognition—learning how to learn, or how they as an individual learn best.
- Gaining mastery over tools and technologies, including AI, to navigate and learn from the plethora of knowledge and information resources available today.
- Nurturing higher-order cognitive skills: critical, creative, logical, rational, deep, and computational thinking skills to become independent thinkers capable of coping with varied life situations, solving problems, and making judicious decisions.
Equally important is the ability to think in the language or frameworks of different disciplines. For example, students should learn:
- To think like a scientist (inquiry and evidence-based reasoning),
- A historian (contextual and analytical thinking),
- A poet (sensitivity and expression),
- An artist (imagination and perspective),
…and so forth.
This multidimensional approach fosters intellectual flexibility—the ability to view problems from multiple lenses, a key to preparing students for satisfying personal and professional life.
3. Learning to Be
This is the most foundational desired learning outcome. Education must help students deepen self-awareness, develop a strong inner compass, and build their own ‘User Manual of Me’. It must guide them toward:
- Living purposefully,
- Choosing ethically,
- Relating empathetically,
- And thriving joyfully.
“Learning to be” anchors all other forms of learning. It is about becoming a whole human being—not just a skilled worker or an informed citizen, but a conscious, compassionate individual capable of living a healthy and joyful life while also shaping a better world.
In Conclusion
An education system aligned with these outcomes—Yearning to Learn, Learning to Learn, and Learning to Be—will not only prepare students for the uncertain futures they face but also prepare them to make the most of the richness and complexity that life offers while being utterly joyful within. This is what good education ought to yield.