Learning is the soul of our species. From our first steps to our last words, we are what we learn. Our education predicts how much we'll earn, how content we will be, even how long we'll live. But for all its obvious importance, learning has lost touch with human progress. We live in an information age, work in a knowledge economy, yet our schools are relics of an industrial era. In Natural Born Learners, education insider Alex Beard takes us on a dazzling tour of the future of learning to show how we can - and why we must - do better. Weaving together expert insight, entertaining anecdote and intelligent research, Beard leads us from the crowded corridors of a London comprehensive to the high-tech halls of Silicon Valley, through the exam factories of South Korea to the inclusive classrooms of Finland to reveal that today we stand on the cusp of a learning revolution. Tackling everything from artificial intelligence to our growing understanding of the infant brain, from the roots of creativity to the way classrooms can be unwitting engines of extremism, this book is a user's guide to transforming learning in the twenty-first century and roadmap to accessing our better future selves.

Author Biography

Alex Beard has worked in education for a decade. After starting out as an English teacher in an inner-city comprehensive, he completed his MA at the Institute of Education before joining Teach For All, a growing network of independent organisations working to ensure that all children everywhere can fulfil their potential. He's fortunate to spend much of his time searching the world for the most promising educational practices and sharing his learning with teachers, school leaders and policymakers in forty-six countries. He's so far visited schools in half of them. This is his first book.