Our education systems are in need of a serious facelift, Whittle School & Studios founder, Chris Whittle suggests. As he embarks on a mission to revamp the way teaching is done, Whittle argues that while technology seems to have changed every aspect of human life, “a large percentage of schools worldwide seem to be caught in a time warp, trapped in the postwar years of Western economic and cultural hegemony,” he tells Forbes. Most “traditional classes” aim only to have a student pass a test rather than teaching them useful skills or thought-provoking concepts, according to Whittle; and the data seems to back him up. Recent research from Brookings suggests that c. 800 mn children from low- and mid-income countries will reach adulthood in just over a decade “without the skills they need to thrive in work and life.”

Whittle has devised his own method of education and hopes to establish campuses in over 30 cities around the world in the next decade. The idea is simple: “To prepare young people to become truly “global” citizens…by doing and by ‘going places’ in-person to ‘see and feel’ for themselves – not by sitting in a classroom taking a static test.”