Education has stopped working.

Schools reward students for repeating what they were told. Marks are awarded for regurgitating a set answer onto a page, on cue, under exam conditions. The student who memorises best, wins.

Look at any modern curriculum and you will notice an absence. Critical thinking, logic, and reason — the disciplines that teach a young mind howto think — are not subjects. They are not modules. They are not assessed.

When an education programme leaves those out, what remains is not education. It is something else, with a different name.

For two centuries, the deal was straightforward. A good education leads to a good job. A good job leads to a good life. Parents accepted it, governments preached it, and children grew up inside it.

That contract has broken. Educational qualifications have been devalued. A degree is now a starting point, not a guarantee — and often not even a starting point. Possessing the certificate no longer means what it once did.

From the age of fifteen, students are funnelled into a narrow band of subjects chosen for exam purposes. They emerge with a piece of paper but no understanding of the world they are about to walk into, and no equipment for the real-life challenges waiting in it.

Previous generations had their own difficulties. None of them faced the particular combination today’s teenagers do.

• Social media.An always-on attention economy designed by adults, optimised against the developing minds of children.
• Identity politics.Pressure to define and defend a self before they have had time to discover one.
• A grim economic outlook.Housing, debt, and a labour market that bears little resemblance to the one their parents entered.

They are arguably the most confused generation in history. The blame does not sit with them. They inherited the situation; they did not build it.