Learning About Learning:
A Brief History of How We Learn (And Why Your Future Depends on What Comes Next)
Why We’re Still Learning Like It’s 1892
In the last 200 years, we invented the steam engine, electricity, the telephone, the car, the aeroplane, antibiotics, nuclear power, the computer, the internet, and smartphones. We split the atom, mapped the human genome, and put people on the moon. The way we communicate, travel, work, and live has been rebuilt multiple times over.
Our economy transformed just as dramatically. We moved from agriculture to manufacturing to services to knowledge work. The skills that made someone economically valuable in 1800 bear almost no resemblance to what’s valued now. The nature of productive work has been completely rewritten several times over.
So it strikes me as strange that our education system has hardly changed during this time. We still group students by birth year, still move them through predetermined content at a fixed pace, and still measure success by how well they memorise information. The basic structure we use today was designed in the 1890s for an industrial economy that no longer exists.
But AI has brought us to a critical juncture. We need to reconsider not just how we deliver information, but what skills actually matter for the economy we’re heading into. To understand where we need to go, we need to look at how we got here.
Part 1: When the Assembly Line Came to School (1800-1890s)
In the late 1700s, Prussia created something genuinely novel with the first system of free, universal education. Before this, learning was reserved for people heading into professional work, while everyone else picked things up on the job. The Prussian model grouped students by birth year, functioning like an assembly line where all the kids turning five by September get placed in the same bucket. That bucket moves forward at a set pace; information is delivered at fixed points along the line, and whether students absorb it or not, everyone keeps moving forward.
Although it sounds pretty cutthroat, it was actually forward-thinking for its time. Prussia wanted everyone educated, not just the wealthy, and the industrial revolution needed workers who could follow instructions, show up on time, and perform repetitive tasks reliably. The model delivered precisely that, helping Germany become an industrial power with a large middle class.
In 1840, Horace Mann brought this system to America because he saw it as egalitarian, as education for everyone that could build a middle class. By 1870, public education was common across the United States, though wildly inconsistent. Different states taught different things, different cities had different standards, and students attended for different amounts of time.
This inconsistency created problems because universities didn’t know what incoming students had learned, and employers couldn’t predict what skills workers would have. So in 1892, ten university presidents, led by Harvard’s president, met to standardise everything. They decided on twelve years of compulsory education and determined which subjects belonged in which years. Physics in your final year, geometry in year nine. These ten people designed the structure that still exists today because standardisation solved real problems for universities and the growing industrial economy.
America was unusual in saying everyone should learn algebra and higher-order skills, not just people heading to university. Other countries tracked students early, sending some toward trades and others toward academic work, but the American system gave everyone access to the same curriculum.
Part 2: 120 Years of Nothing (1900-1990s)
Then we got stuck there for 120 years. The assembly line kept running with the same age-based groupings, the same predetermined pace, the same measurement by memorisation. The system that made sense for an industrial economy in 1892 just kept going, decade after decade, through massive technological and social change.
This wasn’t necessarily wrong because for most of that time, the skills the Prussian model taught were still the skills the economy rewarded. Career success meant having knowledge and applying it correctly, remembering information had genuine value, and following established procedures produced results. The model kept working because what work required hadn’t fundamentally changed.
Part 3: When Information Became Free (1990s-2020s)
The mid-1990s brought something genuinely new when the internet changed how information gets distributed. The cost dropped to nearly zero, and suddenly, anyone could publish to millions of people without needing gatekeepers or broadcast licenses. Personal computers enabled individuals to process information that previously required institutions, and one person with one computer could reach massive audiences. This changed the fundamental equation of education.
Khan Academy demonstrated what this made possible by recording lectures once and letting millions of students watch them at their own pace, pause when confused, and rewind when needed. Classroom time could then be used for actual problem-solving and interaction instead of passive listening. The model flipped, so students consumed information at home and did the hard work of application in class, where teachers could help.
This was a genuine improvement because students could learn at their own pace, and teachers could focus on where students actually got stuck rather than delivering the same lecture repeatedly. Technology made classrooms more human by handling the rote parts.
But even this innovation worked within the same basic structure. We were still grouping students by age, still moving everyone through predetermined content, still measuring success by information absorption. We’d figured out better ways to deliver education, and we’d even started questioning how students learn best. What we hadn’t questioned was whether the information itself, the content we were teaching, still mattered in the way it once did.
Part 4: The AI Juncture (Now)
AI changed what knowledge means. The type of learning our education system optimised for, declarative knowledge and the ability to recall and apply information, has collapsed in economic value. You can ask a machine any factual question now and get a correct answer instantly, describe a problem and receive step-by-step solutions, and show it your work and get detailed feedback. The knowledge we spent twelve years drilling into students is freely available to anyone with internet access.
What we’re learning matters more than ever. The skills our education system optimises for, following procedures, executing known solutions, and processing information according to established rules, are increasingly automated. Meanwhile, the skills we barely teach, critical thinking in novel situations, navigating ambiguity, understanding context, working with other humans, knowing yourself well enough to identify where you add value, these are increasingly essential.
The Prussian model worked for 120 years because it aligned with the economy's needs. That match is broken. We’re optimising for a world where having the right information matters more than knowing what to do with it, but that world no longer exists.
The Industrial Revolution demanded a new education model, and we built one. AI represents a similar magnitude of change. Education will shift again because it has to. We’re still teaching memorisation and procedure when machines do both better than we ever will.
Post Script:
The things most schools don’t teach us will be of the most importance.
- Information synthesis
- Adaptability
- Agency and self-development
- Social skills - fundamental social skills— talking, meeting people, working together
- Creative problem solving
Most schools put them in a group called 21st-century skills and give a lesson on it here and there, but these traits are essentially what make us human, not just operators of a machine. Literally and metaphorically.