Learning in the Age of AI

Praise for the Book

Fix the Past or Invent the Future: Moving Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Education

Praise for Fix the Past or Invent the Future

“Educational leaders today face unprecedented challenges. This book offers what we need most: practical wisdom paired with bold vision. Zhao balances critique of outdated practices with forward-looking insights on AI and student-driven learning, offering school leaders a clear path to transform education in the digital age.”

—Chris Kennedy, Superintendent of Schools, West Vancouver, British Columbia

“Yong Zhao delivers a masterful and urgent critique of our educational paradigm that is both intellectually rigorous and deeply necessary for our times. With characteristic clarity and compelling evidence, Zhao dismantles the mythology of standardized approaches to education, exposing how our reliance on effect sizes and ‘evidence-based’ practices masks the fundamental truth that no intervention works for all students. This book represents a paradigm-shifting work that transcends incremental reform to offer a revolutionary vision of personalized learning. This is essential reading for anyone committed to creating an educational future that truly serves all learners.”

—Jean-Claude Brizard, president and CEO, Digital Promise

“Yong Zhao delivers another provocative wake-up call, challenging how oversimplified trends—from growth mindset to SEL to AI—are misapplied in schools, while urging bold innovation. With sharp critiques and visionary alternatives, he maps a path toward personalized, globally connected learning. This book is the timely jolt educators need to reimagine schools for the future students deserve and our planet needs.”

—Emily McCarren, PhD, Executive Head of School, Keystone Academy Beijing

“While institutionalized educators are considering the future of schooling, Yong works with progressive schools in the here-and-now, to personalize and harness all students to create their own future.”

—Dr. Jim Watterston, former Dean of Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia

“Inspirational reading for those seeking to transform the world of education to align with the spirit of the human being during the age of AI. As the sunshine, rain, and soil are essential for all living things in nature, so is this book for all teachers. Yong’s passion is contagious.”

—Nicole L’Heureux Flynn, middle grades virtual educator and partner teacher, Maize Virtual Preparatory School, Maize, Kansas

“With clarity and courage, Yong Zhao dismantles contemporary myths in education and shows how we can transform schools from one-size-fits-all toward truly meeting the needs of every child. A must-read for anyone serious about shaping the future of learning.”

—Pasi Sahlberg, author of Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?

“Many university academics come across one idea and then plow that furrow for the rest of their lives. But after failing to steer his family’s buffalo when he was a child in rural China, Yong Zhao has not plowed another furrow ever since. Instead, in another brilliant book, Zhao takes a torch to entire fields of malnourished ideas that have become wilted and useless after years of overproduction and overuse. No idea, traditional or progressive, is spared. Evidence-based education, prescribed curriculum, standardized testing, direct instruction, growth mindsets, social and emotional learning, grit, global competence, problem-based learning and even, to a degree, AI; all of these are burned to a cinder. But this is no destructive flame-thrower of a book for its own sake. There’s significant new growth here in a constructive, creative, and practical text that points the way to an educational future where learning engages and responds to what Zhao calls the jagged profiles of all individual learners with personalization, autonomy, and meaningful relationships. You will rejoice in Yong Zhao’s irreverence. But you will also take heart in his vision of a better future for our schools that, in some places, already exists.”

—Andy Hargreaves, research professor, Boston College; visiting professor, University of Ottawa; president and co-founder, ARC Education

More about Yong Zhao

Dr. Yong Zhao is a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas. He previously served as the Presidential Chair, Associate Dean, and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he was also a Professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership. Prior to Oregon, Yong Zhao was University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. Additionally, he worked as a professor of educational leadership in the Faculty of Education at University of Melbourne and senior researcher at the Mitchell Institute of Victoria University in Australia. He was a visiting Global Professor at University of Bath and a visiting scholar at Warwick University in the UK.

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