Beyond Subjects and Silos: Why EdTech Must Break the Status Quo in Education

Introduction: The Missing Curriculum

Education likes to imagine itself as the great equalizer—the system that prepares the next generation for the future. Yet, when we look at the defining challenges of our time—rising hatred, collapsing empathy, accelerating climate change, deep corruption, and intellectual imperialism—it becomes painfully clear that schools and universities are not equipping young people to face them.

These issues are not “optional extras.” They’re existential. They shape how societies function, how economies survive, and how humanity itself endures. And yet, they rarely appear meaningfully in the classroom. Teachers know they matter. Students feel their absence. But the structures of education—locked in their silos of math, physics, literature, or history—leave no space for them. At best, they surface as passing references; at worst, they’re ignored altogether.

This is the first barrier for EdTech innovators: we’re trying to create tools for the world students actually live in, while education remains obsessed with the world inside its textbooks.

Revenue and Resistance: The Double Bind of EdTech

When EdTech projects enter this landscape, they don’t just face pedagogical inertia; they face financial realities. Generating revenue in education is notoriously hard, especially in contexts like India.

1. Public Good Mindset Education is treated as a public good. Innovators are expected to provide tools cheaply or for free, while traditional expenses—salaries, buildings, exams—consume most budgets.

2. Misaligned Priorities Even when money exists, it flows toward “safe” choices: infrastructure, textbooks, standardized testing. Technology that challenges norms is seen as a luxury, not a priority.

3. Suspicion of Change The very innovations that could modernize education often trigger skepticism. Schools ask, “Why change what has worked for decades?”—ignoring that what has “worked” is now producing disengaged students and outdated skill sets.

This creates a paradox. The challenges young people face demand urgent change, but the financial and structural realities of education reward continuity. That’s why many EdTech projects, including our own foundation, turn to donations and CSR funding—not because the vision lacks value, but because the system struggles to recognize it.

Teaching Mode vs. Learning Mode

At the root of this tension lies a mindset problem.

Most educators remain stuck in teaching mode: they deliver knowledge, students absorb it, exams measure it. It’s a model born of the industrial era, where schools were designed to produce compliant workers.

But knowledge today is not scarce; it’s everywhere. We are in the learning mode age, where the challenge is not accessing information but making sense of it, applying it, and connecting it to the human crises shaping our time.

Millennials and Gen Z sense this gap. They want agency. They want to confront real issues, not abstract chapters. When schools refuse to make that shift, students disengage.

The Fear Beneath the Status Quo

Why don’t educators adapt? It isn’t always ignorance. Often, it’s fear.

• Fear of Losing Control: A student-driven classroom feels unpredictable, even chaotic, to teachers trained to command silence.

• Fear of Technology: Many educators lack confidence with digital tools and fear embarrassment in front of their students.

• Fear of Irrelevance: If students can learn anywhere, what happens to the teacher’s authority?

Instead of naming these fears, the system hides them behind tradition. Teachers retreat into subjects, exams, and curricula, even as the world outside shifts rapidly.

The Discipline Trap: When Education Ignores Humanity’s Crises

This fear-driven retreat creates what I call the discipline trap.

Education divides knowledge into subjects—physics, economics, literature—and rewards mastery of each in isolation. But the world’s defining problems don’t respect those boundaries.

• Climate change is not just environmental science; it’s economics, politics, ethics, and survival.

• Corruption is not just civics; it’s sociology, psychology, governance, and lived reality.

• Hatred and empathy cut across history, literature, religion, and digital culture.

• Intellectual imperialism challenges the very foundations of what we call “knowledge.”

Teachers may personally know these issues matter, but the system leaves no room for them. Even when professors want to integrate such themes, curricula and assessments push them back into silos.

Meanwhile, Gen Z sees the cracks. They live with climate anxiety, online polarization, distrust of institutions, and collapsing civic empathy. They know these are not “extra lessons.” They’re the curriculum of survival. But the classroom doesn’t acknowledge it, creating a widening dissonance between education and life.

The Role of EdTech: Breaking the Silos

This is where EdTech can step in—not by creating another “subject,” but by simulating life itself.

At our foundation, we’ve been building RealLives, a simulation game that immerses students in the lived experiences of people around the world. It doesn’t lecture about empathy, climate, or corruption. It lets students live it.

In RealLives, you might be born into a rural family in Burundi, struggling with poverty. You might face a bribe for healthcare in India. You might watch your village shrink under drought in Somalia. These are not abstract problems; they are immediate choices with real consequences.

By connecting these scenarios to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), RealLives turns global crises into personal experiences. Students don’t just learn about sustainability or empathy—they feel why they matter.

This is what traditional classrooms struggle to provide. And it’s why EdTech, when brave enough, can become a bridge between subjects and life.

The Challenge of Convincing Educators

But here’s the rub: the more EdTech pushes into real issues, the harder it is to convince educators.

• Some worry it’s “too political” to talk about corruption or imperialism.

• Others fear it will distract from exam preparation.

• Many simply don’t know how to integrate such tools into their rigid syllabi.

This resistance isn’t malicious. It’s structural. The system rewards teaching to the test, not nurturing empathy or confronting climate anxiety. That’s why EdTech projects face pushback—not because the ideas lack merit, but because they don’t fit neatly into the old molds.

Lessons for EdTech Innovators

What does this mean for those trying to transform education? A few lessons emerge:

1. You’re Not Just Building Tools You’re challenging the discipline trap itself. That means expect resistance—and design for it.

2. Support Teachers, Don’t Shame Them Fear is real. Build solutions that empower teachers to guide, not replace them. Offer confidence, not critique.

3. Play the Long Game Impact may matter more than immediate revenue. Use hybrid models—philanthropy plus scalable business streams—to stay afloat.

4. Measure What Matters Success in EdTech isn’t just about sales. It’s about whether students engage with empathy, problem-solving, and global issues—skills no exam currently measures but the world desperately needs.

A Call for Bravery

At the end of the day, the barrier is not technological—it’s human.

• Educators must be brave enough to admit the limits of subjects and the urgency of humanity’s crises.

• Innovators must be brave enough to hold their vision, even when the system resists.

• Students must be brave enough to demand learning that connects to the world they are inheriting.

Bravery doesn’t mean abandoning tradition; it means transcending it. Teachers will not disappear. Their role can evolve from being knowledge-deliverers to being guides, mentors, and co-learners.

Toward a Future of Learning

We stand at a crossroads. Education can remain trapped in the discipline silos of the past, producing graduates who ace exams but fail to address corruption, climate, and hatred. Or it can embrace a learning future where EdTech, empathy, and student-driven approaches redefine what it means to be educated.

EdTech projects like RealLives are planting seeds for that future. But seeds need nurturing—funding, institutional support, and cultural bravery. Without that, they wither against the weight of the status quo.

If education is to stay relevant—if it is to prepare young people not just for jobs but for humanity itself—it must break free of its silos. It must confront the crises that shape our lives, and it must embrace the tools that make those crises teachable, livable, and solvable.

The choice is stark but simple: cling to teaching mode and watch relevance slip away, or step into learning mode and finally meet the world as it is.