Natural born learners : our incredible capacity to learn and how we can harness it / Alex Beard.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: A tale of two academies -- Part one: Thinking anew (1. Artificial intelligence: beware geeks bearing gifts ; 2. Born to learn: taking baby steps ; 3. Brain gains: going with the flow) -- Part two: Doing better (4. Just do it: cradle to career ; 5. Creation: meet your makers ; 6. Class act: masters of the learniverse) -- Part three: Taking care (7. Big data: the examined life ; 8. True grit: character-building stuff ; 9. Mind control: rebels with a cause) -- Part four: Coda (10. Fail better: open source) -- Afterword: A learning revolution)

Our education predicts how much we'll earn, how content we will be, even how long we'll live. But for all its 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 age. 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. 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, 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 -- Source other than Library of Congress.