There are revelations that are not announced with great fanfare, but in minimal silence. In a moment of pause, while going to a meeting or during an ordinary morning. Sonia Díez had hers in the elevator, just before she turned 59. “We’re almost there”, she thought when faced with the image that the mirror returned to her. After decades orbiting education from all points of view – from student to mother, teacher or center founder – she understood that the time had come to stop adapting and start saying what many know and few dare to formulate: that school, as we know it, is no longer enough.
As a result of that intimate and rebellious gesture, The end of education as we know it (Medialuna, 2025), a book written with the love of teaching, but without reservations. There is no nostalgia or cynicism in him, but rather a gaze that looks straight ahead. Díez, president of the Ítaca Foundation and of the Scientific Committee of the EducAcción Chair of the UAM, does not regret the past, but questions the present and points out what hurts – the disconnection, the loss of meaning, the teachers’ fatigue, the students’ anxiety or the mirage of teaching to pass and not understand – but also what is latent: the schools that are already breaking the inertia, the teachers who sustain worlds and the students who are still waiting for something new different from adults.
His thesis is simple and inspiring: we do not need further reforms, but rather a complete emotional, social and pedagogical reconversion. May education once again be a place where someone asks you who you are, not just what grades you get; where emotional well-being is not a luxury; where technology accompanies you without devouring the human; and where caring is the central verb and not a simple footer. And, above all, where no one – neither student nor teacher – feels that learning or teaching is an act of resistance.
Ask. The title of the book is a declaration of intent. Do you think the current school model is exhausted? Why?
Answer. It’s sold out for three key reasons. Firstly, because it does not keep its promise to accompany the child or young person towards the skills that the world we are moving towards will require, and which have not only changed profoundly, but continue to do so. Secondly, because it doesn’t help them achieve greater well-being or empowerment, because in fact there has been a deterioration of mental health among minors. And third, because it is terribly disappointing when it comes to cultivating a love of learning. And that in itself is a little drama, because learning is (or should be) deeply enjoyable.
Wellbeing should not seek space in the school timetable; rather it should be the underlying theme of the entire educational experience. An anxious, scared or unlistened child will have difficulty learning; and without care no learning is possible. Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that integrating well-being does not mean adding hours of tutoring or training workshops. awareness, but rethink the relationships within the educational center: how it is taught, how it is evaluated, how it is discussed and supported. Schools that focus on well-being reduce anxiety, increase motivation and improve academic achievement.
Q. Isn’t the competency-based education promoted by Lomloe a step in the right direction?
R. It answers some of the questions that need to be asked. Perhaps the greatest contribution of this book is to share not only the diagnosis, around which there is a certain consensus, but also the prognosis. The recent barometer on the perception of education that we created together with Metroscopia reveals that the education system does not work as it should: only 49% of citizens think that it works “well” or “very well”, while 48% describe it as “bad” or “very bad”. What is of greatest concern is students’ “lack of motivation and attention” (88%), while 82% refer to students’ poor social and emotional skills.
Q. This same barometer also shows great public skepticism regarding education laws.
R. Exactly: eight out of 10 people believe that educational standards serve political interests rather than those of students. Ultimately, these laws end up being a starting point for a competition with other parties that have a different position regarding education. What is clear is that there can be no educational transformation without teachers, and many of them today are at their wits end, overwhelmed, demotivated, or silenced. And the worst part is that they are rarely invited to lead the change. What reform can be successful if it doesn’t start from those on the front lines?
Q. What should be the role of teachers in school?
R. We must empower them and reclaim their freedom to teach, free them from bureaucratic burdens and give them back the time they need to innovate, collaborate and train in active methodologies, emotional intelligence or diversity management. Teachers can no longer be mere transmitters of content, but rather managers of learning experiences, capable of integrating pedagogy, technology, emotion and ethics. And, beyond the debate of relationships, classrooms need to be equipped with additional support. Because taking care of teachers is also taking care of students.
Q. It also promotes a reconversion that also makes times and spaces more flexible, so that they facilitate learning and well-being.
R. Why not break, once and for all, with rigid timetables and usual classrooms? Ultimately, school should revolve around what really helps learning: calm, movement, connections, or meaning. For years we have been treating the classroom as if it were a container, and this is a mistake, because space also teaches. Light, color, silence, rhythm… all this influences more than we usually recognize.
What I’m trying to say is that we need to move from classroom teaching to the laboratory of life, creating places that care and times designed for learning, not for conforming. It makes no sense for everyone to proceed at the same pace or measure knowledge with the same rules for everyone. When time and space become more human, education breathes, and with it those who live it every day.
Q. We talk about restoring meaning to learning, connecting it to real life and to the passions and interests of each student. Can there be room for all this at school?
R. The first thing is to recover an essential question: why do we educate? For decades, schools have obsessed over what to teach and how to assess it and have forgotten TO who and for what. When a student doesn’t find meaning in what they learn, it’s not because they lack interest, but because they don’t see the connection between that knowledge and their life. It is the first elephant in the room: the students are present only with their bodies, but with their minds absent and unmotivated; It’s a sort of hidden absenteeism.
Giving space to identity means listening to them much more and recognizing that every child is a life project in progress, not a curriculum sheet. We need to move from a standardized teaching model to one of personalized learning, where the curriculum adapts to people and not people to the curriculum. It is not a utopia, but the natural evolution of education. The most advanced systems already integrate project-based learning, personal development paths and connection with students’ vital interests.
It is possible when we stop measuring only outcomes (reflected in what I call take back death, rigid that measures what has already been done) and we begin to value processes, growth, creativity and authenticity, we will arrive at the true curriculum vitae: flexible, adaptable and different in every human being.
Q. You said that educating is “taking care without leaving scars”. How serious is the problem of emotional distress among students and teachers today?
R. In my opinion it is one of the most serious problems we have, because we can have more or less enlightened or competent citizens, but if they are not mentally and emotionally well, none of this makes sense, because we would lose sight of the most essential thing in human beings, which is mutual care. Without safe spaces and time to listen to each other, without a culture of care, there is no community of value. And without it there is no transformative education.
As we mentioned, teachers are absolutely overwhelmed, and are forced to absorb what society is unable to handle, which remains with them in the classroom in a thousand ways: like children who have had little sleep and not enough rest; in minors who experience family stress closely and also their own stress, conditioned by social networks and which in turn affects their social relationships and their ability to learn. For all these reasons, emotional well-being must be placed at the center of the educational mission.
One of the points I defend is that the education system should have integrated the entire infrastructure of mental and psychological care for those ages of health systems, so that any treatment is immediate and linked to the educational community.
Q. How should teachers be prepared to address the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence in education?
R. Artificial intelligence will not replace teachers, but rather will expose the irreplaceable value of teaching. In a world where information is infinite and accessible, the teacher’s priority cannot be to transmit data, but rather to help students think critically and teach them to ask questions, to decide ethically, to live with automation without giving up their autonomy and to learn to learn.
Therefore, teacher training must focus on three dimensions: teaching how to use AI appropriately (with ethics and discernment); take advantage of it as a learning amplification tool; and maintain the focus on the human, the emotional and the relational.
Artificial intelligence can free up time for what is essential – accompaniment, dialogue, tutoring – but if not used in a targeted way it can amplify depersonalization. The other day I read an article that recalled how, in 1965, mathematics teachers demonstrated against the use of calculators, and this leads me to think that, in technology, the first thing we have to calibrate is when it is irreversible. And artificial intelligence today is. Therefore, the first thing we educators must do is accept it and use it to carry out our mission, because if we limit ourselves to being mere consumers, we will hardly be able to bring about any change.
Q. In The end of education as we know ithighlights the importance of developing eco-social awareness in schools. What does this mean and what impact does it have on education?
R. An ecosocial consciousness is not just another cross-cutting issue; It’s a paradigm shift. It means understanding that educating means preparing people to take care of themselves, others and the planet. It is not just about environmental sustainability, but also about human and social sustainability. When school incorporates an ecosocial perspective, it teaches interdependence, responsibility, and purpose. Students stop seeing knowledge as an end in itself and begin to understand it as a tool to improve life.
Its impact is transformative: it generates engaged citizens, not spectators; Cooperators, not competitors. It is a pedagogy of care and co-responsibility, the basis of a new educational contract with the future.
