Rethinking Education in the Age of Collapse

🧭 Why Education Is One of Our Core Orientations at Umoja Greenlands

At Umoja Greenlands, we do not view education as a neutral or optional endeavor. In the face of what we describe in Understanding the Metacrisis: Context and Urgency, education becomes a foundational strategy for survival, regeneration, and transformation.

The Metacrisis refers to the complex, interconnected web of global systemic failures—from ecological breakdown to political instability, from economic fragility to social fragmentation. But at its root lies a crisis of perception, meaning, and sense-making—a crisis in how we understand ourselves, each other, and the world. This is fundamentally an educational crisis.

Education as a Systemic Solution

Preparing for Complexity: The challenges we face cannot be solved with linear thinking or obedience to outdated systems. Education must develop capacities for systems thinking, emotional resilience, and ethical discernment.
Reclaiming Human Agency: Education must restore our sense of collective responsibility and power, not just train individuals to fit into a broken industrial model.
Addressing the Root Causes: As explained in our Metacrisis orientation, the logic of separation and domination has shaped not only our economies and politics but also our inner lives. A new kind of education—grounded in wholeness and relationality—is essential to overcoming this.

Why This Is a Core Orientation

This is why rethinking education is not just a topic for us—it is an orientation. Our educational projects are designed to cultivate:

Deep ecological and ethical awareness
Intergenerational learning rooted in lived experience
Local autonomy and traditional wisdom
Community-building and compassionate communication
A shift from ego-centered development to life-centered stewardship

In short, education is the bridge between collapse and regeneration. And it is how we reclaim the future.

🌍 Understanding the Problem: Education as a Tool of Control

Most of today’s global public education systems are built on the Prussian model, developed in the early 1800s following Prussia’s defeat by Napoleon. The state’s response was not just military restructuring, but the invention of a new educational system designed to mold citizens into obedient, predictable, and productive components of the nation-state.

⚖️ What Was the Prussian Model Designed to Do?

Train soldiers: Obey without question.
Create factory workers: Adapted to time-regulated, repetitive tasks.
Produce nationalists: Loyal to state authority, willing to conform.
Shape consumers: Programmed to follow societal cues, advertising, and economic roles.

⚙️ Core Features Introduced by the Prussian System:

Standardized testing to sort and rank children.
Uniform curriculum decided by the state.
Bells and time regulation, imitating factory schedules.
Strict age grouping to break intergenerational wisdom transmission.
Passive memorization, not critical thinking.

These techniques spread globally, especially to industrializing nations like the United States in the late 19th century, and continue to define most public schooling systems today.

“Our systems were not made for us, they were made to shape us into tools for other people’s goals.” — Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

🔗 Further Reading: The Dangers of the Prussian Model

The Prussian Model and the Failure of Personal Ethics — https://irasocol.medium.com/the-prussian-model-and-the-failure-of-personal-ethics-6cfa81fbc8bd
The History and Results of Our Disastrous Public School System (FEE) — https://fee.org/articles/the-history-and-results-of-our-disastrous-public-school-system/
Education Systems Were First Designed to Suppress Dissent (UC San Diego) — https://today.ucsd.edu/story/education-systems-were-first-designed-to-suppress-dissent
The Prussian Model of Education in the US Should Be Reexamined (Cardinal Institute) — https://cardinalinstitute.com/the-prussian-model-of-education-in-the-us-should-be-reexamined/
Is It Time to Abandon the Prussian Model of Education? — https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/time-abandon-prussian-model-education-christopher-jackson/

🏡 The Alternative: Homeschooling as Liberation

Homeschooling, when done with intention and integrity, is not about isolation. It is about liberation from a system rooted in militarism, industrialism, and obedience.

🌱 Why Homeschooling Aligns with Regenerative Values:

Personalized Learning — Children follow curiosity, not standardized syllabi.
Critical Thinking — They learn to question, reason, and create.
Rootedness in Life and Nature — Education connects to gardening, food, Earth, community.
Emotional Safety — Homeschooling can protect from bullying and alienation.
Cultural and Spiritual Freedom — Children learn what truly matters: compassion, ethics, ancestry.
Freedom from the Consumption Machine — Education isn’t about being a gear in the capitalist system.

🔗 Further Reading: Benefits of Homeschooling

The Academic and Social Benefits of Homeschooling — https://jamesgmartin.center/2020/11/the-academic-and-social-benefits-of-homeschooling/
Homeschooling Is Beneficial and Not Harmful to Children (NHERI) — https://nheri.org/homeschooling-is-beneficial-and-not-harmful-to-children/
How Homeschooling Compares to Public School in Academic Achievement — https://www.parents.com/kids/education/home-schooling/homeschool-vs-public-school/
Benefits and Disadvantages of Homeschooling: A Guide for Parents — https://research.com/education/benefits-and-disadvantages-of-homeschooling
The Rise of Homeschooling: The Confessions of an Educator — https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/202203/the-rise-homeschooling-the-confessions-educator

🌟 A Living Example: Daniel Schmachtenberger’s Homeschooling Journey

Daniel Schmachtenberger is a well-known thinker, systems philosopher, and social architect recognized for his deep insights into the Metacrisis—the interconnected global challenges threatening civilization. His brilliance is often attributed to his unconventional, deeply intentional education at home.

🏡 His Homeschooling Story

Daniel was homeschooled throughout his childhood by parents who were educational theorists. They believed children should not be molded by industrial systems designed for obedience, but rather guided by intrinsic curiosity.

“It was an educational theory experiment. I had no curriculum at all… I never did handwriting, spelling, or state capitals.” — Daniel Schmachtenberger

His education focused on:

Intrinsic motivation – letting curiosity lead learning
Systems thinking – starting early with sciences, philosophy, and global ethics
Interdisciplinary exploration – no artificial boundaries between biology, neuroscience, physics, or ethics
Spiritual, emotional, and cognitive development – as a holistic human being
Freedom from grading and time fragmentation – enabling long, deep dives into complex ideas

“Why is the sky blue?” turned into a lesson in physics, atmospheric chemistry, light diffraction, neuroscience, and the philosophy of perception.

Listen to Daniel describe this upbringing: Transcript & Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0orqdwFkFEg

🚀 Outcomes of This Approach

Advanced Intellectual Development
By age 11, Daniel was studying neurophysiology. By 16, he was consulting in health optimization. There were no ceilings on learning—only open doors.
Systems and Moral Awareness
Daniel understood from an early age the interdependence of life. He was not just learning about the world but asking: What role do I play in its evolution?
Freedom from Indoctrination
Without institutional conditioning, Daniel retained independent thought and vision, enabling him to challenge dominant paradigms and design systems for a wiser civilization.
Agentic Lifelong Learning
His love for knowledge never needed coercion. With no punishments or rewards, his intrinsic agency was cultivated—not broken.

“When we force kids to do uninteresting things while ignoring their natural interests, we break their love of life. Then we have to motivate them with money or grades.”

🔑 Key Lesson

Daniel’s journey is living proof of a powerful idea: We must educate for wholeness, not productivity.

His education:

Honored curiosity
Trusted his inner compass
Exposed him early to truth, ethics, awe, and wonder

He shows what becomes possible when education is re-rooted in love, freedom, and the evolution of consciousness itself.

Learn more about his work: https://consilienceproject.org/

Education in a Time Between Worlds by Zak Stein

Zak Stein’s Education in a Time Between Worlds is a collection of essays exploring the role of education during this pivotal period in human history. It calls for a planetary, education-centric civilization—not merely reforming school systems but radically transforming what education is, what it’s for, and how it’s delivered.

🔍 Key Points from the Book

1. Education Is Central to the Metacrisis

Stein argues that educational systems are not just part of the crisis—they reproduce it. They shape consciousness to sustain the status quo:

Reinforcing outdated, industrial-era hierarchies.
Prioritizing economic outputs over human development.
Conditioning obedience, not agency

2. Schools as Tools of Control

Modern schools are modeled after Cold War industrial systems:

Designed to produce obedient workers and loyal citizens.
Massively scaled, bureaucratic, and testing-based.
Divorced from ecological, emotional, and philosophical development

3. The Integral Meta-Theory of Education

Stein introduces a bio-psycho-socio-cultural model—an integral approach that transcends:

Reductive “human capital” views of education.
Technocratic and authoritarian schooling models.
The absence of spiritual, ethical, and communal dimensions

4. Crisis of Teacherly Authority

In a post-truth age, educational authority has eroded. Stein highlights:

How trust in knowledge systems collapses.
How “edutainment” and algorithmic manipulation fill the vacuum.
The need to cultivate authentic, relational teacher-student dynamics

5. The Need for New Educational Infrastructures

He envisions:

Decentralized educational hubs instead of factory-model schools.
Integral technologies that support human flourishing, not surveillance.
Education as a driver of emancipation, not conformity

6. Concrete Utopianism

Rather than collapse into dystopia or naive optimism, Stein calls for concrete utopias: grounded, systemic proposals such as:

Basic income for learners
Open knowledge networks
Educational commons for planetary citizenship

🎥 Zak Stein on the Metacrisis and Education

Watch this key video:
Zak Stein: Values, Education, AI and the Metacrisis
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFVoearUvP8

📚 Get the Book

Buy or explore the book here:
🔗 https://www.zakstein.org/publications

PDF Reference:
Education in a Time Between Worlds (Zachary Stein, 2019) — full text analyzed above.

🧠 Beyond Skills: Education as Inner Awakening

While education is a necessary response to the Metacrisis, it is not sufficient if it remains merely technical or informational. At the deepest level, the root of our global crises lies in a psychological and spiritual condition: the illusion of the separate self.

As explored in Awakening Beyond the Ego, our dominant ways of thinking and being are shaped by egoic structures—patterns of thought that center the individual as isolated from others, from the Earth, and from life itself. This illusion leads to competition, domination, exploitation, and disconnection—feeding the very systems driving ecological, social, and personal collapse.

The Ultimate Purpose of Education

At Umoja Greenlands, we believe the highest function of education is to support ego transcendence—to guide individuals, especially from a young age, to:

Recognize the illusion of separation
Understand their deep interconnection with all life
Act from compassion rather than fear or control
Align personal growth with collective and planetary healing

This does not mean teaching doctrine or belief, but cultivating inner clarity, critical reflection, and heart-centered awareness. Only with such a foundation can we meaningfully engage in any external regeneration—be it farming, governance, or community life.

Education for Wholeness

Therefore, our educational orientation is not just practical or pedagogical—it is existential. It is a path to reclaim our humanity, to restore our relationship with life, and to help children and adults alike become stewards of a world worth living in.

In this sense, education is not the preparation for life. It is life itself—lived in awareness, in relationship, and in service to all.