Can we get better at living together?

Simply put, this book is relevant to everyone, and once you have read it, you should read it again. With poetic accuracy Tom asks the questions we should all be focusing on at a time when everything is uncertain and nothing can be relied upon. The book comes after 4 years of research into the education and future of our children, the things they are failing to be taught, and the things we should be ensuring that they learn. This book is a manual on how to become not just a person better equipped for a world of evolving methods of commerce and employment, but how to become a better ancestor for future generations.
It is "not just mastery of new tools" Tom says, "but mastery of a new mind set."
Having spent time in Afghanistan, with those children living in the most dire of circumstances, with no hope of an education yet retaining the dream of one, and likewise having spent time with Western children, to discern directly what they are missing from from their education, Tom has mapped out and launched a mission to redress an education system which has long needed redress, to involve the learners in their learning, to teach the children the practical, non-academic skills they need to succeed in life, which the current curriculum simply fails to teach. "How do we co-exist as global citizens?" "How do we build bridges in a world of walls?" "How do we become Internationalists in a time of nationalism?"
Simply put, Tom raises some home truths that need to be raised, if there is to be any hope for our children and the next generation beside them to have a life with any security, resilience or peace.
"The 20th century model of progression will be obsolete and a single career rare".
Tom warns: "A third of the skills workers need will be obsolete by 2030."
Teach the children "global competencies, rather than lists of wars previously won."
"No previous generation needed to be so aware of the vicariousness of their chosen vocation or the turbulence of a world in flux." Many occupations will simply no longer exist. Therefore the outdated practices of our current education system and its narrow focus, needs revolution.
Each chapter of this book is a poignant reminder of the fragility of our current state of being, the breadth of systematic inequality and injustice in global education and the need to better this state of being for our children. To obliterate racism and barriers. To embrace change and to adapt with it. "Those who adapt fastest will win".
"The starting point has to be a better understanding of what lies ahead."
Read this book. Then read it again. Start your journey to becoming a better ancestor.

Narrated by Tom Fletcher himself. An excellent speaker. His in-person talks are both motivational and inspiring, should you ever have the opportunity to experience one.

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1 person found this helpful

Superb manual for life!

This book is full of useful guidance and expert advice for a full and fulfilled life and learning.
Readers of any age will get a lot out of this book. The author’s audiobook performance is energetic and genuine. Very much recommend!

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