New View EDU Episode 75: The Future of Smart

Available May 13, 2025

Find New View EDU on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and many other podcast apps.

Are educators trying to create the best human versions of AI…or the best humans? That’s a central question for Dr. Ulcca Joshi Hansen when she thinks about the future of education. Drawing upon her bestselling book The Future of Smart, she joins host Debra P. Wilson for a discussion about human-centered liberatory education, what schools should do differently to prepare students for an uncertain future, and how she views topics like agency, curriculum, and technology in light of human development.

Ulcca Joshi HansenUlcca shares that her journey as an educator led her to ask, if we want to fix problems in the world, shouldn’t we start by creating different humans who will contribute to a better society to begin with? Following that train of thought has helped her shape a career as an author and futurist who focuses on transforming education. She outlines three types of school models: the conventional education model; the innovative reform model, which she describes as “bolting things onto” conventional schooling; and the human-centered liberatory model, which she says needs to be brought from the fringes to the center of education’s future.

Ulcca argues that the way most schools have operated for centuries is counterintuitive to what we now understand about human development, and she encourages educators to think about how giving students true agency and decision-making capacity in charting their learning might transform their experiences. She points to typical practices such as age-based groupings and grade-level curriculum standards as antithetical to what students really need to thrive as human beings. 

Understanding that a huge shift away from the traditional approach might be difficult from a marketing standpoint, Ulcca talks about how she views transparency and engagement as being key to creating a more liberatory school model. She envisions helping parents understand the benefits of a less standardized curricular path from early elementary school all the way through high school, and points out that while there’s often anxiety about things like college acceptance, the higher education officers she has spoken with are generally enthusiastic about applicants who can demonstrate a deep connection with their learning and a passion for their subject matter, rather than just a list of AP classes and credentials they checked off for the sake of the grade.

Asked to name three things she would recommend schools do right now to improve their educational models for the future, Ulcca begins with shifting the culture away from grade-specific standards and toward a broad-based competency approach. She outlines ways in which faculty can think of themselves as a team of teachers all working within age bands to help ensure kids leave their school having achieved a progression of skills and dispositions that will help them thrive. Second, she recommends a lower-tech approach to teaching and learning, citing evidence that interaction with technology has impacted attention, social cognition, and biological awareness in ways that diminish learning and growth. Finally, she encourages schools to engage students and parents explicitly in understanding human development, and to find ways to encourage critical thinking and agentic thinking about how kids want to spend their time and attention. “Giving (kids) a chance to be out in the world, spreading their wings, testing their limits a little bit in productive ways, actually is an important gift we can give them,” Ulcca says.

Key Questions

Some of the key questions Debra and Ulcca explore in this episode include:

  • As a futurist working in education, how are you thinking about what schools and students need at this time of rapid transition?
  • What do you see as the key dispositions and skills for parents, students, and teachers in human-centered schools?
  • If schools could do three things right now to become more aligned with what you believe is the future of education, what would those three things be?

Episode Highlights

  • “We've organized kids' time in school and outside of school in ways that don't give them a chance to do what they need to be doing to develop during adolescence in healthy ways. And we see that. Our adolescents aren't doing well, they're anxious, they're depressed, they're turning that into self-harm or risky behaviors. And so we add SEL into our schools, when actually what we need to do is foundationally change how we allow them to spend their time.” (8:34)
  • “And the irony is that I think in middle school, right now, the vast majority of schools do exactly the opposite of what we should do, which is middle-schoolers are not small high school students. We should not be leaning hard into more rigorous academics. This is actually the age where we should be backing off a little bit and saying to them, hey, let's help you understand what's happening. Let's lean into cognitive skill development, helping you be metacognitive about yourself, right? And really answering your question, why should I care? And really allowing you to drive it because if you care about it, you will do work there.” (18:49)
  • “What I hear from kids is, oh my God, you keep telling me that I'm supposed to do this boring stuff that I have no interest in so I can graduate and go to college and then I can live my life. And what they are saying is, I want to live my life now. There are things I care deeply about, some of them existential and some of them not. And that's what I want to sink my teeth into. And in fact, developmentally, that is exactly the moment when they need to be doing it, and not do what we have been doing to them, which has led to this new thing called the quarter-life crisis, which is you have 25-year-olds saying that they feel purposeless and that they feel unmoored and really kind of unhappy with their lives.” (26:41)
  • “In some ways it's about how well does this person know themself, and have they actually done the work to be good enough friends with themselves and their own story and their own journey, that they can hold space for another person to come to them as their self and not immediately go into a tailspin, right? And really that's what this kind of education requires, is that, not that you're a perfect educator or guide, but rather that when you meet somebody who says something to you that might be hurtful or lashes out at you or questions you, that your immediate reaction is not to fight back and close in, but rather to be like, I'm OK. Like, let's go there, right? Because that is the kind of relationship that you're going to have when you're doing this kind of work.” (34:38)

Resource List

Full Transcript

  • Read the full transcript here.

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About Our Guest

Dr. Ulcca Joshi Hansen is a futurist and author of the award-winning book The Future of Smart. Her work interrogates the assumptions that shape modern systems and explores how to bridge cultural and ideological divides during periods of rapid social and technological change. An internationally recognized expert and thought leader on human-centered design, Hansen works with individuals, organizations, and institutions to shift mindsets and design systems that enable individuals and communities to rebuild human connection and social cohesion. She considers herself first and foremost an educator, whether as a mother to her two sons, a workshop facilitator, or keynote speaker. 

Ulcca is a first-generation American who began school as an English language learner and became the first in her family to complete college and graduate school. Ulcca attended public schools but had parents and teachers who encouraged her to pursue her own interests and questions from an early age. These interests took her—both metaphorically and literally—around the world, imagining into the stories of the past and the possibilities of the future. 

Ulcca spent two years as a program fellow at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in New Jersey, working with thoughtful educational transformers such as Ted Sizer and Sir Ken Robinson. She has spent the two decades since then researching, advocating, and working to move our education system and the players within it in the direction of being human-centered: meeting the developmental needs of young people, reflecting what we know about how learning happens, and honoring the need each person has to find, develop, and live out their unique sense of purpose.

Ulcca’s work includes nonprofit planning, program design, evaluation and improvement, adult/teacher preparation, and school-based improvement strategies, always with an eye toward incorporating cutting-edge research on human development, the learning sciences, and best practices in networked organizational change management. Her newer offerings are focused on helping adults develop skills to relate more confidently and bravely to conversations about race, identity, equity, and belonging.