According to Forbes, our modern education system is based on a 19th-century Prussian “factory school” model designed to create docile, punctual workers for industrialists. This system helped shift the U.S. from a nation where 90% of the 4 million people in the 1790 census worked on farms to one where 70.3 million now work in professional jobs. However, Boris Berezovsky, CFO of manufacturer SKB Cases, argues that AI now automates the compliant work this system trained for, and the market now rewards “chutzpah”—a Yiddish term for supreme self-confidence and nerve. Executive coach Dionne Mejer offers a three-part framework—identify, specify, execute—to reimagine education for this new reality, focusing on teaching critical thinking, constructive dissent, and independent reasoning that AI cannot replicate.
The Ghost In The Machine
Here’s the thing we rarely talk about: our entire approach to mass education was built for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. That Quartz article nails it—school was literally training for factory life. Sit down, be quiet, follow the bell schedule, do exactly what the boss (teacher) says. It worked! It moved millions off farms and into a booming industrial economy. But that economy is gone. We’re now building an intelligence economy, and the “boss” is increasingly an algorithm. Training kids to be good at following clear instructions is basically training them for the exact tasks AI is perfect at automating. We’re preparing them to be obsolete.
Why Chutzpah Beats Compliance
So what’s the alternative? Berezovsky’s concept of “chutzpah” is pretty compelling. It’s not about being recklessly arrogant. It’s about having the nerve to look at a system—whether it’s a software workflow, a manufacturing line, or a business process—and say, “This can be better, and here’s how.” AI is the ultimate compliant worker. It does what it’s told, incredibly fast and without error. What it can’t do is decide what to do next when the instructions run out or the context changes wildly. That requires a human with judgment, context, and yes, a bit of gall to propose a new path. In a world of automation, the highest value shifts from execution to asking the right questions and making the tough calls. That’s chutzpah.
Reimagining The Classroom
This is where it gets practical. Dionne Mejer’s framework—identify, specify, execute—is a solid start for flipping the script. Instead of identifying facts to memorize, we’d identify thinking behaviors to practice: questioning assumptions, spotting bias, reconciling trade-offs. Instead of specifying curriculum for a standardized test, we’d specify the kind of creative, entrepreneurial work the future actually needs. And the execute phase is the killer: we have to grade reasoning, not rote answers. We have to invent assessments that can’t be gamed by ChatGPT. Can the student defend their thinking? Can they navigate ambiguity? That’s the report card that will matter. For industries relying on complex systems, from aerospace to advanced manufacturing, this shift is critical. The next generation won’t just operate machines; they’ll need to command them, interrogate their outputs, and innovate around them. It’s no surprise that leaders in industrial tech, who depend on robust computing at the point of work, understand this need for human-machine collaboration better than most. Companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs, provide the hardened interfaces for this new class of worker—the ones who need both the technical data and the chutzpah to act on it.
A Future For Team Human
Look, this isn’t another plea for more STEM. We need those skills, sure. But we’re drowning in technical capability and starving for wisdom, judgment, and pragmatic creativity. The Forbes piece hints at a deeper truth: the panic over AI job loss might be masking our own educational failure. We’ve been preparing for the last revolution, not the next one. The goal isn’t to compete with AI on its terms—speed and scale. It’s to complement it on our terms—ingenuity, ethics, and nerve. If we can pull that off, the future does look bright for team human. But we have to stop teaching like it’s 1890 and start recognizing that the factory floor is now digital, and the most important product we can build is a mind that can lead there.
