The Real World Is Uncertain—So Why Do Schools Teach the Opposite?
The Overconfidence Factory: How Schools Teach Certainty in an Uncertain World
In my last year of secondary school, a few classmates and I asked our religion teacher if we could have an open discussion. A real one—where we questioned ideas, debated different views, maybe even left class with more questions than answers.
His response was swift and absolute:
“I know everything. You guys know nothing.”
And he meant it.
It wasn’t just a flex. It was a worldview. The idea that knowledge is something to be deposited into students, like filling up an empty glass, rather than something to be explored, questioned, or—heaven forbid—revised. The irony, of course, is that he was a theology teacher. A field that, historically, has been on the losing end of knowledge revolutions time and time again.
But this isn’t just about one overconfident teacher. This is about the broader problem baked into state education systems worldwide: they are factories of certainty.
From the moment we enter school, we are conditioned to believe that knowledge is a fixed, stable thing. There is a right answer and a wrong answer. The curriculum is set, the textbooks are updated (but not too often), and the job of the student is to memorize and regurgitate.
This system does a fantastic job at producing people who can pass standardized tests. It does a far worse job at preparing people for a world where uncertainty reigns.
The Curse of Certainty
For most of human history, the institutions that shaped society—religion, monarchies, even early scientific academies—operated under the assumption that knowledge was settled. To challenge established “truths” was dangerous, even heretical. The people who questioned the status quo—Galileo, Darwin, Einstein—were outliers, often ridiculed in their time.
But today, knowledge does not move at the pace of centuries. It moves at the pace of Moore’s Law. Entire scientific paradigms shift within decades, sometimes years. The things we “knew” to be true ten years ago—about diet, medicine, cosmology, even economics—have been revised or overturned by better data and theories.
Quantum physics, for example, doesn’t just tell us that the world is probabilistic—it tells us that our very perception of reality is limited. We construct models, sure, but they are only ever the best explanations we have for now. They will be superseded. They must be.
And yet, our education system doesn’t reflect this. Instead, it trains people to believe they are learning the final version of knowledge. That there is a correct answer, and they’ve been given it.
Why This is a Problem
This overconfidence is everywhere.
It’s the reason we have pundits confidently predicting financial markets, despite getting them wrong 60% of the time. It’s why some people still think their high school history class gave them a complete understanding of geopolitics. It’s why politicians double down on policies even when the evidence shifts against them.
When people are trained to believe they know, they stop questioning.
They stop adapting.
They become fragile in the face of uncertainty.
And in a world that is increasingly unpredictable—climate change, AI revolutions, political realignments—fragility is not just a personal weakness. It’s a societal risk.
What Should Schools Teach Instead?
Instead of certainty, schools should teach epistemic humility—the ability to hold knowledge lightly, to accept that what we know today is provisional, to be comfortable with doubt.
Students should be trained in Bayesian thinking, where beliefs are updated as new evidence emerges.
They should learn about paradigm shifts—not just the discoveries themselves, but the resistance to them, the sociology of knowledge, the ways in which entire societies have had to unlearn “truths” they once thought were immutable.
They should be exposed to unknown unknowns—black swan events, existential risks, and the limits of human foresight.
Because the future will not be kind to those who are certain.
It will belong to those who can question, adapt, and—above all—live comfortably with uncertainty.
Does this mean there are no professionals who resist the trap of overconfidence? Of course not. The best and brightest—true experts—are often the first to acknowledge the limits of their own knowledge. But they are the exception, not the rule.
Right now, there’s plenty of noise about improving education, but most of it boils down to reasserting traditional knowledge transfer—more facts, more tests, more certainty. We should be far more ambitious. Learning isn’t just about knowing; it’s about thinking, questioning, adapting.
And then there’s AI—arriving faster than most expect. It promises a revolution in learning, but will we truly harness its potential? Or will state institutions, in their usual fashion, replicate the same outdated system, just with fancier tools? The real challenge isn’t just upgrading technology; it’s upgrading our mindset.
Would love to hear your thoughts—does this resonate with your experience?