School Sucks Even More Than You Thought | Esme Van Deventer

On the future (or lack thereof) of education Schools are failing students, employers are failing graduates, and parents are failing to ask the right questions - this episode is for business leaders worried about their talent pipeline, HR professionals frustrated by grad programs, educators fighting the system from within, and anyone who has ever wondered whether the money poured into education is producing any real return. Bronwyn Williams and Sharon Pierce sit down with teacher and educational philosopher Esme Van Deventer to diagnose exactly how schools, systems, and societies are producing the wrong kind of human for the world of work. They examine the product problem (wrong skills, siloed thinking, format compliance over real understanding), the pricing problem (education as a status game rather than a value-generating investment), and the parent problem (helicopter parenting, homework battles, and Gen Z bringing mom and dad to job interviews). Esme shares her hands-on classroom experiments in integrated, phenomenon-based learning: a 10-week Charlie and the Chocolate Factory curriculum that teaches geography, ethics, science, economics, and writing as one interconnected system rather than separate hour-long silos. She explains why she has never believed in homework, how she sets Bloom's Taxonomy Level 4 and 5 exams for remedial boys and gets a 54% class average, and how a classroom fiat economy complete with wages, tax, UIF, desk rent, and a restorative justice court is teaching financial literacy and democratic thinking to 12-year-olds. The conversation covers the CAPS curriculum and its arrested development, Montessori and Reggio Emilia philosophy versus jug-and-mug pedagogy, the commercialisation of private schooling, AI slop and critical digital literacy, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus and fake sources, and why a degree is now just a country club membership rather than a signal of genuine capability. It ends with a clear argument: the solutionist mindset - contextualise, diagnose, empathise, solution, operationalise, digitise, relearn - must be embedded from cradle to career, and that work and learning should never have been separated in the first place. Montessori education overview - American Montessori Society · Reggio Emilia Approach - official overview · Connect with Esme on LinkedIn · Survive the AI Apocalypse website · Connect with Bronwyn on LinkedIn · Connect with Sharon on LinkedIn · Follow Bronwyn on Instagram · Follow Sharon on Instagram