Educating for the World We Need by Thais Mantovani
A note on how this was written
This following text was born from a collective process during the Feminine Futures webinar, hosted by Local Futures and inspired by Thais Mantovani’s presentation on regenerative education. Participants from around the world were invited to reflect, dream, and write together. The words below are a weaving of many contributions-personal insights, ancestral memory, lived experience, and radical hope. The form of this article mirrors its content: education as a co-creative act, rooted in community, connection, and care. May it be read as an invitation to remember what we’ve always known, and to begin again, together. A Manifesto for Reimagining Learning in Times of Transformation
Education is one of the most powerful forces shaping how we relate to the world and to ourselves. In a time marked by ecological collapse, social fragmentation, and spiritual disconnection, the question of how we learn becomes inseparable from the question of how we live.
And yet, most of what we call “education” today prepares us for a world we no longer want. It trains us to fit into systems that harm the Earth, devalue life, and perpetuate inequality. It asks us to perform, produce, and compete-rarely to listen, feel, or imagine.
We are at a turning point. The future we long for cannot be built with the tools of the past. To create a regenerative world, we must begin by rethinking how we learn.
A Crisis of Separation
The dominant education systems around the world share deep-rooted patterns of fragmentation. They separate learning from life, people from place, knowledge from wisdom, and children from their innate sense of curiosity. These systems are often grounded in patriarchal and colonial logics-hierarchical, linear, performance-based, and focused on producing workers for an economy of endless growth.
In this model, emotions are distractions, intuition is unscientific, and Indigenous or ancestral knowledge is at best supplementary, at worst erased. Success is measured in grades, diplomas, and wealth-not in empathy, stewardship, or community well-being. Learners are disconnected from the natural world, from their own bodies, and from each other.
As one participant described it: “Our education system doesn’t allow children to be themselves. It makes them betray their own potential in order to fit in.”
This is more than a flaw. A slow, normalized erosion of imagination and agency. A system designed not for thriving, but for surviving in a world that needs urgent transformation.
Despite its current limitations, education holds extraordinary potential. It is one of the most powerful leverage points for systems change because it shapes not only what we know, but how we see the world and our place within it. Education operates at the level of mental models, helping to form the very foundations of our worldviews. It teaches us what is real, what is valuable, and what is possible.
Human beings are narrative creatures. We make meaning through stories, and those stories inform how we act, what we protect, and what we believe we belong to. Education, at its core, is a space for meaning-making. It can either reinforce dominant myths of separation and scarcity, or open space for new narratives grounded in interconnection, reciprocity, and regeneration. To transform our systems, we must first transform the stories that sustain them and education is where those stories begin.
Reclaiming the Meaning of Learning
What might education look like if it were rooted in care, connection, and the rhythms of life?
To educate for a regenerative world means to shift from extraction to participation, from instruction to co-creation. It means unlearning the illusion of control, and remembering that we are nature, not separate from it.
In this vision, the Earth is not a subject, but a co-teacher. The forest, the kitchen, the river, the garden-these become classrooms. Children learn not only with their minds, but with their hands, hearts, and senses. Learning is no longer confined to desks and standardized tests; it unfolds through play, ritual, listening, movement, silence, storytelling, and shared responsibility.
Regenerative education respects the time of the seasons, the cycles of growth and rest. It values mistakes as fertile ground for learning. It honors elders, ancestors, and the many more-than-human beings who shape our lives. It invites children to know themselves not through competition, but through collaboration, reflection, and care. It nurtures ecological literacy, emotional intelligence, and the capacity to ask meaningful questions.
As one voice beautifully put it: “Education is not about filling minds, but about bringing forth what is already alive inside.”
Educating for the world we need means shifting from domination to reciprocity, from fragmentation to wholeness, from performance to presence. It means creating spaces where knowledge is not extracted but cultivated-where learning emerges through relationship with the land, with one another, and with the deeper pulse of life itself. As these new forms of education continue to bloom around the world, they remind us that transformation is not only possible, it is already alive. All we have to do is listen, tend, and learn how to learn again.
What’s Already Emerging
Across the globe, seeds of this new paradigm are already being planted. Visionary educators, communities, and initiatives are cultivating spaces where learning becomes a living, relational process. These projects remind us that another way is not only possible, it is already happening.
Here are a few examples brought by participants:
These are not isolated experiments. They are living responses to the crises of our time-and quiet revolutions in the making.
Originally published on LinkedIn by Thais Mantovani.
Listen to the Local Futures podcast with to Thais Mantovani on the topic of ‘ Localization: Learning from Indigenous Communities ‘.
Originally published at https://www.localfutures.org on May 5, 2025.
