In the 20th century we expected school systems to sort people: those who would go to university and those who wouldn’t, those who would do professional jobs and those who wouldn’t, and those who would fill the semi-skilled and unskilled jobs for which minimal learning at school was required.
In the 21st century we are aware that this is not good enough – not good enough morally, not good enough socially and not good enough economically. Machines can do much of this work better than people. We should be able to celebrate that fact, but we can’t, because the transformation is leaving millions of people without work, especially young people around the world. Only the well educated can possibly thrive in the world that is coming. We need every young person to graduate from school ready for college, career and citizenship.