Education in World That Will Not Stand Still

Education cannot remain unchanged while society around it is changing. Nor can its future be entirely predictable, particularly as successive industrial revolutions have transformed the way people live, work and interact. Education has repeatedly changed because the needs of society have changed. Yet there is a fundamental difference between education and many other social institutions. Education cannot simply follow every change as it occurs. It has a responsibility to preserve knowledge, values and cultural heritage while preparing young people for a future that is not yet fully known. That is why education often changes more slowly than society.
This trend has existed for centuries. But the Fourth Industrial Revolution is making it much more difficult to manage. With artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI and the emerging development of agentic AI systems, the pace of technological and social change may be becoming too rapid for the traditional model of education to remain adequate. For much of history, education followed social and technological change. In the age of AI, however, education can no longer afford simply to catch up. It must learn to anticipate change and prepare learners for a future that has not yet fully arrived.

When industry changed, education changed

The relationship between industrialisation and education can be seen through four industrial revolutions. First Industrial Revolution, driven by steam power and mechanisation, transformed production and moved economic activity increasingly from small workshops to factories. The expansion of mass education during this period was influenced by several forces. Industrialisation and urbanisation created a growing need for workers with basic literacy, numeracy and the ability to function in an increasingly organised industrial society. At the same time, governments saw schooling as a means of building national identity and preparing citizens for changing political and social responsibilities. Religious organisations and social reformers also promoted education for moral, social and economic reasons, while the growing capacity of governments to organise and finance public schooling made wider access possible. Improvements in printing and the falling cost of books further supported the spread of education. Industrialisation, therefore, was not the sole cause of mass education, but it was an important force within a much broader transformation of society.
Second Industrial Revolution brought electricity, steel, chemicals, railways and mass production. The requirements of industry became more sophisticated. Basic literacy was no longer enough. Economies needed technicians, engineers, scientists, managers and skilled workers. Technical and vocational education expanded, while secondary and higher education assumed greater importance. 
The third brought computers, electronics and telecommunications. The workplace became increasingly dependent on information and digital technologies. Education responded by expanding computer literacy, information technology, science and engineering education. Universities became increasingly important to the knowledge economy.
Each transition followed a broadly similar pattern. Technology changed the economy and society; the nature of work changed; and education gradually adapted to produce the knowledge and skills that the new environment required. But Fourth Industrial Revolution is challenging this pattern.

Technology changes not only what we teach, but how we teach

Industrial revolutions have not only changed the knowledge and skills that education must provide. They have also gradually changed the methods and tools of teaching. In earlier societies, teaching depended heavily on oral instruction, direct demonstration and apprenticeship. As schooling expanded during the first revolution, education became more organised around classrooms, timetables, textbooks and standardised curricula. Teachers generally stood at the centre of the learning process, while students listened, read and reproduced what they had learned.
The technologies of Second Industrial Revolution gradually expanded teachers’ toolkit. Printing made textbooks more widely available. Laboratories allowed students to learn through observation and experiment. Later, educational films, radio and other technologies introduced new ways of presenting knowledge.
Third Industrial Revolution accelerated this process. Computers, multimedia, the internet and digital learning platforms made information far more accessible and allowed students to interact with simulations, digital resources and learning materials beyond the classroom.
Fourth Industrial Revolution may take this transformation much further. Artificial intelligence can already help generate learning materials, explain concepts in different ways, provide feedback and support more personalised learning. More advanced AI systems may increasingly assist students and teachers in carrying out complex learning tasks.
But technology alone does not constitute educational progress. Putting computers or AI into a classroom does not automatically make learning better. The important question is whether technology enables students to understand more deeply, think more critically, solve problems and learn more independently.
This suggests that the future classroom may need to move beyond the traditional model in which the teacher mainly delivers information and students mainly receive it. Teachers will remain essential, but their role may increasingly be that of a guide, mentor and designer of learning experiences.
The real opportunity is therefore not to replace teachers with technology, but to use technology to make teaching more engaging, personalised and intellectually demanding.
Future classrooms may increasingly rely on problem-based learning, project-based learning, collaborative learning, simulations and AI-assisted personalised learning. Instead of receiving the same explanation at the same pace, students may be able to explore concepts through different pathways according to their level of understanding. AI could provide immediate feedback, identify areas of difficulty and offer additional explanations, while teachers could devote more time to discussion, mentoring, experimentation and higher-order thinking.
The role of the teacher may consequently shift from being primarily a transmitter of information to a designer and facilitator of learning. A teacher might present a real-world problem rather than a ready-made answer, ask students to investigate it using digital and physical resources, challenge the conclusions they reach, and help them connect their findings with established knowledge. Students would not simply ask, “What is the correct answer?” They would also learn to ask, “Why is it correct?”, “What evidence supports it?”, “What might be missing?” and “Can we find a better solution?”
Such approaches would make learning less about remembering information and more about understanding, applying, questioning, creating and learning how to learn. Technology would provide powerful tools, but human curiosity, judgement, interaction and responsibility would remain at the centre of education.

When machines begin to do cognitive work

Artificial intelligence is different from earlier technologies because it is increasingly capable of performing tasks associated not only with physical labour but also with cognitive work.
Generative AI can produce text, images, computer code and other forms of content. More advanced AI systems are beginning to perform sequences of tasks, use digital tools and operate with a degree of autonomy. The implications for employment, professional practice and human learning are still unfolding.
This creates a difficult question for education. If machines can increasingly retrieve information, write reports, generate code, analyse data and perform other routine cognitive tasks, should education continue to place so much emphasis on memorising information and reproducing established answers?
The answer is not to abandon knowledge. Quite the opposite. In a world of powerful AI, sound knowledge may become even more important because people need sufficient understanding to question, verify, and intelligently use what machines produce.
But knowledge alone will not be enough. Students will increasingly need to know how to ask meaningful questions, identify reliable information, evaluate AI-generated answers, recognise errors and bias, solve unfamiliar problems, communicate ideas and make responsible decisions. They will also need creativity, curiosity, adaptability, and the capacity to work with others.

Education must move from reaction to anticipation

This is where the traditional relationship between society and education needs reconsideration. For much of history, society changed first, and education eventually responded. A new industry emerged, new occupations developed and educational institutions adjusted their curricula. The process could take years or even decades without making the educational system completely obsolete.
AI may shorten that interval dramatically. A curriculum designed today may encounter technologies tomorrow that its designers could not have anticipated. Some occupations will change; some tasks will disappear; new occupations will emerge; and many existing professions will be transformed rather than eliminated.
Education therefore needs a different kind of flexibility. Instead of attempting to predict precisely which occupations will exist in 10 or 20 years, it should develop learners who can continue learning when those occupations change. This means shifting some emphasis from teaching for a particular job to learning for adaptability.

What does this mean for Bangladesh?

The issue is particularly important for Bangladesh. Our education system has made significant progress in expanding access, but much of learning still revolves around textbooks, examinations, memorisation and credentials.
These remain important, but they cannot be the whole purpose of education in an AI-driven world. The classroom should increasingly become a place where students learn to think, question, investigate, discuss, create and solve problems. A science lesson should not end with remembering a definition. Mathematics should develop reasoning rather than merely the ability to reproduce procedures. Language education should strengthen communication and critical thinking. Projects and practical activities should connect knowledge with real problems.
Teachers will remain central to this transformation. AI should not be seen simply as a replacement for teachers. Rather, teachers need to become even more important as mentors, guides and interpreters of knowledge. They will need to help students distinguish reliable information from misinformation, understand the limitations of AI and use technology responsibly.
Teacher education will therefore become as important as curriculum reform. A new curriculum cannot succeed if teachers are not given the knowledge, confidence, training and time needed to implement it.
Universities face a similar challenge. They cannot know exactly what the labour market will look like a decade from now. But they can give students strong disciplinary foundations while developing their capacity to learn across disciplines, use emerging technologies and adapt to changing professional environments.
The purpose of education is bigger than employment
There is also a danger in discussing education entirely in terms of employability. Education has always had a broader purpose. It transmits culture, develops values, strengthens citizenship and helps people understand themselves and the world around them. These purposes do not disappear because AI has arrived.
Indeed, they may become more important. If machines become increasingly capable of producing information and making recommendations, human beings will still have to decide what is right, meaningful and worth pursuing. Technology can assist decision-making, but it cannot remove the need for human judgement and responsibility. Education must therefore prepare people not only to work with intelligent machines but also to live responsibly in a society increasingly influenced by them.

The real challenge

The central challenge of Fourth Industrial Revolution is not whether education can keep adding new technologies to the classroom. It is whether education can become sufficiently flexible and forward-looking to prepare learners for conditions that cannot yet be fully predicted.
Previous industrial revolutions gave education time to catch up. The AI era may not. For much of history, education followed social and technological change. Today, the relationship may need to become more dynamic. Education must preserve what society has learned from the past while preparing people to question, adapt and create what comes next.
The goal, therefore, should not be to build an education system that predicts the future perfectly. No system can do that. The goal should be to develop learners who are ready for a future that cannot yet be predicted. That may be the most important lesson the Fourth Industrial Revolution has to offer education.
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The writer is a Distinguished Professor of Eastern University and former Vice Chancellor of East West University, Bangladesh