People are born systems-thinkers. Education has the power to encourage our innate connection with the complex world, yet instead our schools focus on creating a workforce educated just enough to feed the capitalist workforce pipeline. Reminiscent of and building further on John Taylor Gatto’s education critiques, The End of Education as We Know It is for people who want to create schools that teach how to live in harmony with each other, with Earth, and all Earth holds.

Readers will understand when and how to engage in disruptive actions, manage system tensions, support child and adult learning, and use these skills to design whole new approaches to schooling. Far more than a call to education-reform-as-usual, Ida Rose Florez’s inspiring critique:

• Provides tools to explore patterns in education and influence patterns that lead to change
• Gives readers specific skills for working in complex systems, whether with a group of children, a contentious school board, or state or provincial governments
• Helps readers reimagine schools as places where communities learn together in a whole new way.

This clarion call to action rings a bell for teachers, parents, grandparents, educators, and policymakers to challenge the outdated paradigm of coercion and exploitation that shapes our current schools. It’s time to build a new educational model based on a resilient and regenerative future.