A timely guide to encouraging young people to find meaning, discover their true potential, and lead purposeful lives in the age of AI
From the cofounders of B-Unbound, a Big Picture Learning initiative that empowers young people through community engagement and real-world learning
Educators and parents are often the first to see (and feel) the impacts of rapid innovation on young people. And with recent developments in AI and social media, the youth mental health crisis has only intensified. In this critical moment, The Education Pivot offers a paradigm-shifting framework that encourages us to help our youth—and ourselves—find meaning and purpose.
Grounded in the seminal work of psychiatrist and Man’s Search for Meaning author Viktor Frankl, this human-centered model emphasizes 2 essential needs that schools often overlook: meaning, the motivational force that calls us to contribute to the world, and mattering, the deep knowing that who we are and what we do makes a difference. This book shows how communities can design learning opportunities around relationships, real-world experiences, personal agency, and authentic assessment.
“The Education Pivot offers a compelling vision for educational transformation in an era of artificial intelligence. Pam Roy and Elliot Washor remind us that as technology transforms the nature of work, the uniquely human capacities for purpose, relationships, creativity, and contribution become even more essential. Grounded in decades of innovative practice, this timely book challenges educators, parents, and community members to create learning environments and design schools where every young person is known, valued, and prepared not only to succeed but to lead lives of meaning and mattering.”
—Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the California State Board of Education
“The Education Pivot makes a powerful case, rooted in the authors’ experience building alternatives, for a better system—one that replaces compliance, comparison, and empty achievement with real work, consequential relationships, and the deeply human experience of mattering.”
—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Drive and The Power of Regret
“In The Education Pivot, Washor and Roy have presented their readers with a timely and extraordinary gift. Just when many of us felt doomed and trapped by the growing presence of AI, with its ability to render humans intellectually powerless and lazy, they remind us that there is good reason for hope and optimism. This book is an invaluable resource for educators who haven’t given up on the idea that education can be used to transform lives. Read it and return to teaching with a renewed sense of optimism, relevance, and conviction.”
—Pedro Noguero, Distinguished Professor of Education, University of Southern California
“A superb book exploring one of the most important questions facing us all: Will AI make us more robotic, or will it unlock our deepest human qualities? And nowhere is this question more important than in education. Everyone should read this.”
—Johann Hari, New York Times best-selling author of Stolen Focus and Lost Connections
“Roy and Washor have written the moral call education needs: restore meaning to the center of learning, not compliance. This was Viktor Frankl’s core insight. For educators and parents ready to question the system they serve and rebuild from conscience, this book will change how they see their work.”
—Alexander Vesely-Frankl, grandson of Viktor Frankl and cofounder of the Viktor E. Frankl Institute of America
“Roy and Washor offer a vision for designing schools where every young person develops purpose, deep relationships, and the capacity to make a meaningful contribution to their communities and the world.”
—Marc Ecko, CEO and founder of Ecko Unltd. and Complex Media, and author of Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out
“In The Education Pivot, Washor and Roy draw on decades of experience at Big Picture Learning and B-Unbound to make a timely case for education built around meaning and mattering, not compliance. Their case is grounded in real stories from the learners and communities living this work every day. Even as AI further exposes the limitations of a system built for another era, they provide a clear-eyed, hopeful path forward: double down on what makes us human and build learning environments where every young person is seen and known, not just measured.”
—Demi Edwards, CEO and cofounder of Education Reimagined
“Meaning and mattering have often been given nods as important, but rarely if ever have they been put forth as the filters for how we should understand and incorporate newness, in this case, artificial intelligence. Pause, and really think about that. Then, open this book. Open your eyes, and open your mind. Enable the pivot you unquestionably need. You couldn’t have a better resource or better guides to the powerful journey ahead.”
—Larry Robertson, award-winning author of Great Question and Rebel Leadership
“The Education Pivot is a profound and soul-stirring call to reclaim the human heart of learning. By grounding their vision in the rich metaphor of the overstory—our reach for meaning—and the understory—our deep need to matter—Washor and Roy brilliantly elevate educational discourse far beyond pedagogical strategy to a moral imperative centered on the human spirit. This book [is] essential reading for anyone ready to transform the heart of education.”
—Irwin Kula, president emeritus, Clal, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and author of Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life
“With Viktor Frankl supplying the why and Big Picture Learning illustrating the how, Roy and Washor make clear that education was always supposed to help us become ourselves and find our place in the world. AI is showing us how far schools have drifted from that purpose. The Education Pivot reminds us why we built public education and offers a blueprint for reclaiming it.”
—Ross Wiener, education policy expert and senior advisor, Initiative on Superintendent as Civic Leader at Harvard University
“With tangible examples from the field, the authors offer a road map to migrating meaning and mattering to the core of our educational system. They don’t insist that we slow the pace of change but rather that we act now to equip our students to adapt and thrive in the face of it.”
—Julia Freeland Fisher, JD, director of education, Clayton Christensen Institute
“As headlines insist AI has broken education, Roy and Washor make the case that it has simply revealed what was already broken—and they do so with the clarity of people who’ve spent decades building the alternative, one rooted not in standardization but in meaning, mattering, and the kind of intergenerational connection no algorithm can replicate.
This isn’t a book about repairing old systems. It’s a call to a new generation of builders and navigators to become, individually and together, the kind of people a child can be held by. In an age obsessed with what AI can do, The Education Pivot is a reminder of what only we can still do. This has always been the real work. Now it’s unavoidable.”
—Ulcca Joshi Hansen, author of The Future of Smart
“The Education Pivot is a beautiful and timely reconsideration of the purpose and practice of education. As they conclude, this call to conscience ‘reminds us that our humanness is sacred and powerful.’”
—Tom Vander Ark, leading voice for the future of learning and senior advisor, Getting Smart
“Roy and Washor’s latest book is a passionate reminder of the case for viewing education as a human endeavor rather than a system. The Education Pivot reaffirms the value of helping young people find their purpose, discover their talents, contribute to their community, and confidently represent their accomplishments to the worlds of employment, training, and tertiary study.”
—Viv White AM, co-director of Big Picture Learning Australia
“What makes Roy and Washor’s book worth reading is that they understand something thirty years of ed-tech investment has already proven: It’s not technology that transforms schools but the capacity of learning environments to foster human connection and agency. Proven at scale for over three decades, the Big Picture Learning model foregrounds ‘meaning and mattering’ as the measure of what counts. In the age of AI, this is the paradigm shift education actually needs—grounded not in promise but in proof and the hard work of professional practice.”
—Margaret Honey, learning and children’s media consultant
“How do we educate in the age of AI? Roy and Washor’s inspiring new book offers a deeply human answer: design schools where young people are well-known, engaged in authentic, community-connected learning, and assessed through demonstrated understanding rather than testing and sorting. The good news? The International Big Picture Learning Credential is already doing this in Australia—and now being piloted here in the US. Onward!”
—Peter Ross, managing director of the Stuart Foundation
“This book could not be more timely. As artificial intelligence spreads into virtually every corner of our lives, Roy and Washor open a pathway to preserve what AI could destroy: our capacities for imagination, creativity, personal connection, and basic physical skill. These traits are not only what make us human; they also make life worth living.”
—Todd Oppenheimer, executive director of the Craftsmanship Initiative and author of The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology