What is the point of school, if the future has no jobs?

What if the future we are preparing students for no longer exists?

In a recent article from Business Insider, Elon Musk suggests that artificial intelligence and robotics are advancing so rapidly that within the next 10 to 20 years, paid work could become optional for humans. In this future, machines generate most economic value and income is no longer tightly tied to labour.

Ten years.

That is not abstract. That is a child currently sitting in a primary school classroom.

Whether you admire Musk or deeply distrust him is almost beside the point. The speed of AI advancement, automation, and decision making is already reshaping work, professions, and identity. Even if his vision never arrives in full, elements of it are undeniably on their way.

So the question schools need to confront is not whether this future will happen exactly as predicted.

It is this: If work changes fundamentally, what is school actually for?

Our reality of school

Ask most schools what they are preparing students for and the answer is usually confident and familiar.

“We prepare students for the world that awaits them.”

But when you examine what schools actually organise themselves around, a different reality emerges.

Most schools prepare students for a number.

In Australia, that number is often the ATAR. Or a certificate. Or a credential that signals readiness for a trade or profession. Curriculum priorities, assessment schedules, subject hierarchies, reporting cycles, senior pathways, and even wellbeing initiatives quietly bend around these outcomes.

This is not about intention. It is about design.

Systems reveal what they value through what they measure.

When time is tight, what is protected?

When pressure rises, what is prioritised?

When success is celebrated, what is named?

Grades. Ranks. Pathways to jobs.

At this point, many schools respond with reassurance.

“We teach soft skills too.”

Collaboration, communication, resilience, critical thinking.

And on paper, this is often true.

But when push comes to shove, when content coverage competes with human capability, content almost always wins.

Calling these capabilities “soft” allows them to be sidelined. Important, but optional. Valuable, but secondary. Spoken about, but rarely assessed with the same seriousness as academic success.

So while schools say they prepare students for the future, the system teaches something else entirely.

That performance equals worth. That success is external. That value is conditional.

Following the logic all the way through

If we take the future Musk and others describe seriously, even in part, the implications ripple far beyond schooling.

They reach into pathways we have traditionally treated as untouchable.

Medicine.

Law.

Engineering.

AI systems are already demonstrating extraordinary capability in diagnosis, pattern recognition, legal analysis, optimisation, and decision support. This does not mean humans disappear from these fields, but it does mean the nature of expertise is changing rapidly.

Which raises uncomfortable but necessary questions.

Is university still the default next step for every student? Is medical school about knowledge mastery, or about judgement, ethics, and human decision making? Are we preparing students for professions, or for roles that may look entirely different by the time they arrive?

These are not anti-education questions.

They are relevance questions.

If schools continue to define success as access to fixed pathways, and those pathways fundamentally shift or narrow, then schooling becomes dangerously fragile.

Because when students are trained to see their worth through a single future identity, the collapse of that identity creates far more than disappointment.

It creates a crisis of meaning.

Our wonder, will school even exist?

This brings us to the uncomfortable middle question.

If work is no longer the primary organising force of society, and credentials no longer guarantee purpose or security, does school in its current form still make sense?

If AI can already outperform humans in many of the tasks we still assess, writing, analysing, solving, generating, then this is not an AI problem.

It is a purpose problem.

Preparing students for jobs in a world that is actively reshaping or reducing human labour is not future focused.

It is future denial.

And if school continues to define success through credentials and rankings alone, it risks becoming irrelevant, not because learning does not matter, but because its purpose no longer aligns with reality.

Why this becomes a psychological risk

This is where the stakes deepen.

For generations, school has quietly taught young people a powerful narrative.

Your value comes from achievement.

Your worth comes from productivity.

Your future comes from employability.

If that narrative collapses, and nothing replaces it, the risk is not boredom.

The risk is emptiness.

Psychology consistently tells us that humans need purpose, contribution, and belonging to flourish. When identity is built almost entirely around external performance and economic utility, removing those anchors can lead to anxiety, disengagement, and loss of agency.

If schools only talk about human capabilities, but do not design, assess, and defend them with the same seriousness as grades, then they are not preparing students for the future.

They are leaving them psychologically exposed to it.

In a world where work is no longer the organising principle of life, the ability to construct meaning beyond productivity is not a nice extra.

It is essential.

Our hope, why school still matters

And this is where the conversation turns.

If machines become capable, human capacity becomes more important, not less.

Regardless of whether Musk’s future arrives fully or partially, the trajectory is clear. Complexity, uncertainty, ethical decision making, and human connection are increasing, not decreasing.

This is where school matters deeply.

School can be the place where young people learn:

• who they are and what they stand for

• how to live and collaborate with others

• how to make ethical decisions in uncertain contexts

• how to adapt, relearn, and reinvent themselves

• how to contribute meaningfully beyond productivity

These are not soft outcomes.

They are the hardest, most demanding capabilities a society can cultivate.

In any plausible future, school remains relevant when it prioritises developing humans, not just producing workers.

What schools must do to remain relevant, starting now

System level change is essential, but schools cannot wait for permission.

Regardless of whether Musk’s vision unfolds exactly as predicted, relevance now depends on intent.

Schools that remain relevant will:

• measure more than content recall and ranking

• design learning that requires judgement, ethics, and decision making

• prioritise contribution, collaboration, and belonging

• assess growth, reflection, and capability, not just performance

• stop treating human capabilities as secondary to academic success

The question is not whether schools care about these things.

Most do.

The question is whether they are willing to value them when they compete with results.

A dream worth daring

And this is where I want to end with a challenge.

I dare a school to leave grades and content at the door.

I dare a school to design learning where human capabilities are the sole measure of success.

Where curiosity matters more than coverage. Where contribution matters more than competition. Where identity matters more than ranking. Where purpose matters more than productivity.

I have a dream that one day, schools will stop asking, “What job will this child get?”And start asking, “What kind of human will this child become?”

Because whether the future arrives exactly as Elon Musk predicts or not, one truth is already clear.

The world needs humans who can think, care, adapt, and contribute meaningfully.

If schools can do that, they will not become irrelevant.

They will become indispensable.