In 1978, Johnny Rotten sneered, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
It’s hard not to think that many students, families, and teachers—looking at the rigid structures of formal schooling—would answer, “Yes.”
What if schools saw students as whole people, not just “learners”? What if education prioritised values, wellbeing, relationships, and the capacity to make a meaningful impact—over narrow measures of academic performance? How much could the world change?
Certainly academic studies would be likely be ‘an important part’ of a holistic and healthy education process but, right now, it feels like that’s ‘the whole of’ the mainstream formal schooling process!
Right now, education often operates like a ‘Pink-Floydian’ production line, churning out test results and compliance rather than well-formed young people with a healthily developed capacities including those which foster curiosity and agency. Society is all the poorer for it. The outcomes are clear: skyrocketing rates of anxiety, disconnection, and burnout. Instead of asking why these issues exist in schools, we double down on interventions to manage their symptoms – truancy programs, wellbeing initiatives, and behaviour policies – while leaving the system itself unexamined.
In healthcare, the concept of “person-centred care” has shown how transformational it can be to respect individuals holistically – seeing them as more than their conditions. Schools could benefit from a similar approach, valuing students beyond their grades and fostering growth across a range of social, emotional, civic, and academic dimensions.
As it stands, education systems often resemble the “factory model,” favouring conformity and efficiency over community and creativity. Teachers feel dehumanised by scripted curricula; students are tested more than they are taught. Often the broader purposes of education are sacrificed in pursuit of narrow, reportable outcomes. Education policies today seem locked in a model that prioritises measurable outcomes over meaningful ones. Teachers report feeling micromanaged by rigid, high-stakes curricula; students endure relentless assessments that undermine authentic learning. It’s a system that often fails both groups.
It’s time to reimagine what schools could be. What if education focused on the fully human experience by building communities, celebrating diversity, and equipping learners with all the tools they need to lead meaningful, healthy, and interconnected lives?
In healthcare, “person-centred care” is revolutionising outcomes by focusing on individuals holistically – respecting their values, needs, and unique circumstances. Why not adopt a similar philosophy in education? Perhaps a person-centred school is the place where the goal isn’t just grades but a holistic and healthy growth: academic, social, physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, cultural, and civic. Place of learning that embrace the deeper joys and challenges of being fully human rather than reducing students and teachers to data points on a graph.
There’s no shortage of educators, students, and families who feel that formal education must change. AI has led many to question exactly what that change might look like.
Perhaps it’s time to ask harder questions: Why do we keep sidelining the broader purposes of education? How can schools rebuild a sense of community and belonging? A person-centred approach to education might be what we need – not as a lofty ideal but as a practical way to re-centre schools (and society?) on what truly matters.
Disrupted History 