The Education System Is Broken. The Future of Learning Is AI.

In my lifetime, I’ve had over a hundred teachers. Out of those hundred, only a few were great. Some were well-meaning, but most were trapped in a system that rewards memorization, conformity, and yesterday’s thinking. Only one taught me skills that actually prepared me for the future.

I remember a math teacher in 2005 telling us to memorize formulas because “you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket.” Three years later, we all started carrying supercomputers in our pockets. That moment sums up my entire education. Outdated. Reactive. A wasted opportunity.

We were taught how to memorize, not how to think. No questioning. No critical thought. No sense of how any of it would apply to our future. Take notes, memorize, take the test. Next. Then it was gone. Zero connection to the material. Zero reason to care.

The problem isn’t that teachers don’t care. Most are thrown into impossible circumstances. One person is asked to teach twenty or thirty unique minds, each with different strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles. It can be done, but it’s rare. The truth is our education model was designed for an industrial age that no longer exists.

The Cost of Stagnation

The results speak for themselves. Studies show that more than half of American adults read below a sixth grade level. That means millions of people struggle to engage with complex information, weigh nuance, or think critically about the world around them. If education is supposed to prepare us for life, we have to ask: life when? The world of the past, or the one we’re walking into?

Education should prepare us for the future. Yet academia often prepares students perfectly for yesterday. When I earned my Personal Trainer certification earlier this year (2025), I saw how outdated the material was. Nutrition guidelines, exercise science, even how to measure blood pressure were all a decade behind the curve. The same thing happened in college, where we were trained on outdated tape cameras and editing methods that had already been replaced by new technology. My first job out of school didn’t even exist when I chose my major. How can students plan their futures when the system can’t even see six months ahead? What students really need are timeless skills: critical thinking, adaptability, creativity, and problem-solving. Skills that prepare them for any future, not just the past.

That’s why AI matters. Personalized, adaptive, and infinitely scalable, it can do what a single teacher in a crowded classroom never could. The truth is most traditional teaching jobs may not exist in the future. AI will be the one curating lessons, adapting to each student, and tracking progress in real time. The role of the human teacher will shift to what machines can’t replicate: guiding, mentoring, and inspiring. And learning doesn’t have to end at graduation. Real education should encompass a lifetime.

One model is ending, but a better one is waiting to be built.

The Opportunity

Current AI platforms are already pointing the way. Khan Academy’s Khanmigo can act like a personal tutor, asking questions and adapting to how you learn. Duolingo Max uses AI to roleplay conversations and explain mistakes in real time. Quizlet’s Q-Chat can adjust as you study, turning flashcards into an interactive dialogue.

I have taken classes on Coursera too. You can sit in on courses from most universities, including Harvard and Stanford, for free. You get the knowledge, but it is still a one-size-fits-all model. AI could change that. Instead of static lessons, the system would adapt to your learning style.

The best teachers in the world can and should teach most of the world’s students. AI makes that possible. Imagine the top minds uploading their lectures, writings, and methods into adaptive learning systems. Each student could have direct access to the world’s greatest educators, personalized to their pace and style of learning.

If you’re a kid who learns best through games, your education could feel like leveling up inside a high-stakes adventure. If you’re fascinated by Mars, you could learn history, math, science, and language through the lens of exploring the red planet. Instead of memorizing disconnected facts for a test, every subject could tie into a story or challenge that actually sticks.

This isn’t limited to children. Adults can re-educate themselves, reskill, and explore entirely new fields without waiting for an institution to catch up. Knowledge at your fingertips. Lifelong learning for anyone who wants it.

Raising the Bar

Right now, we keep lowering the bar. Standardized tests measure memorization instead of curiosity. Curriculums are watered down until they lose meaning. Meanwhile, the pace of change is exponential. The shifts of the next decade will reshape our lives more than the last thousand years.

IQ is falling too. A 2023 Northwestern University study found that U.S. scores declined between 2006 and 2018 in key areas like verbal reasoning, problem solving, and numeric reasoning. The very skills we need most for the future are the ones slipping away.

We can either pretend the old model still works, or we can raise the bar and design education for the world we actually live in.

Community has always been part of this. In Blue Zones, regions with high concentrations of centenarians, knowledge and resilience come from groups that learn, problem-solve, and support each other over lifetimes. Technology can help us scale that model. From open-source projects to online forums and apps, people already self-organize around complex subjects and thrive. Education should look the same: intentional, connected, and powered by curiosity.

The Moonshot

When JFK set the goal of reaching the moon, it lit a fire under a generation. Today we need a new moonshot, not for space but for how we live, learn, and build. AI, Bitcoin, personalized medicine, and automation are rewriting what is possible. But education is the foundation.

We are standing at the edge of possibility. Education is how we unlock it. With it, people can think critically, adapt to change, and push beyond limits once thought impossible. Without it, we remain stuck in distraction, division, and short-term thinking.

What if we aimed for abundance in learning, where anyone, anywhere could study with the best teachers, guided by AI that adapts to them and challenges them to grow? The old classroom is ending. A new era of learning is beginning. One built on curiosity, connection, and abundance.

But I still think back to that one teacher who actually prepared me for the future.

Shoutout to Karen Emerick, who ran the gifted program in my middle school. You had to test into it, but it was the only class that truly prepared me for what came next. We solved real-world problems, learned how to use a Mac, and developed critical thinking skills. There were no constraints, no tests, just true learning. It should have been available to everyone.

That class changed my life. A few years later, while I was in high school, the program was canceled due to budget cuts. So little money was available, and what we did have went to new sports facilities while classrooms went without the basics.

Looking back, my high school made clear just how broken the system had become. Our first AP class had 20 kids sharing four textbooks, taught by someone untrained for the subject. Most days, we just sat around playing cards. In English, we watched Saved by the Bell on the classroom TV. In biology, reruns of CSI. In Spanish, you could fail a test and then stay after school to “clean the room” for an A. I’m sure many students across the country have faced similar stories of wasted time and missed opportunities.

Real education was almost non-existent. It felt like a joke. In my town, the assumption was that you would stay where you were, get married, have kids, and work one menial job the rest of your life. That seemed to be the thinking behind everything.

Think of our potential when real education is available to the masses. Imagine what we could become.

For more on AI, Bitcoin, and how longevity shapes our future, check out my new book, Future Proof: The Intersection of Bitcoin and Longevity.