Preparing Students for an Unpredictable Future

Students of today must pivot for tomorrow

If we want our schools to be places that help students meet the possibilities of tomorrow, we must encourage cultural curiosity, opportunities to recover from failures, and a willingness to pivot in the face of new challenges, said keynote speaker and cultural diplomat Ravi Hutheesing.

July 14, 2025

If you are experiencing a bit of whiplash these days trying to figure out where the country is headed, what is happening in our public schools, and how best to support our students, the sensation is justified, says education and cultural futurist Ravi Hutheesing. The last time the nation had to respond to such uncertainty and shifting winds was five years ago during the global pandemic, he says. “We woke up in the pandemic and everything changed, and so many of you rose to the occasion to figure out how we were still going to serve our students through this most complex moment in our lives.”

Preparing our students, schools, and school boards to pivot and handle this latest onslaught of change is critical, Hutheesing says. “We’re faced with a decision: Are our schools going to be places of possibilities or are they going to be cultural battlegrounds? Those seem to be the choices that we have.”

If we opt for places of possibilities, that means welcoming cultural curiosity. “We have to learn more about ourselves and also about others,” including their beliefs, behaviors, and values, Hutheesing says. “We have to think critically and teach our students to think critically, to have an open mind, to challenge assumptions, and to recognize our biases. There’s no shame in having biases. It’s part of being human. We have to communicate cross-culturally. We have to seek diverse interactions and build global relationships.”  

Hutheesing, author of the book PIVOT: Empowering Students Today to Succeed in an Unpredictable Tomorrow, is a leading voice for the power of global education, the vital role of youth leadership, and the universal language of music.

An American-born descendant of India’s Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, Hutheesing has served as a cultural diplomat for the U.S. State Department and founded multiple educational and cultural enterprises, including Celebrating Heritage in the Arts, an initiative that recognizes, develops, and celebrates the passion and diversity of culture through music, technology, and media. Ravi Unites Schools is an international network of over 100 schools whose students participate in peer-to-peer, cultural interactions online. A singer-songwriter who traveled the world as the guitarist with the late ’90s Grammy-winning pop-rock band Hanson, Hutheesing often punctuates his messages about the importance of education and cultural competency with a musical performance.

He shared his insights—and a bit of music—during his keynote address at NSBA’s 2025 Annual Conference in Atlanta in April. The following are excerpts from Hutheesing’s address: 

Purposefully working against polarization and toward world peace sounds like a big vision and a faraway possibility, but what could be more important than creating a peaceful world and ensuring that our students have the desire and are empowered with the tools to do that? 

Things are changing. The workforce is pivoting. We’re pivoting from humans that perform like machines to machines that perform like humans. President Donald Trump tells us that he’s bringing jobs back. But then you have people like Bill Gates who say artificial intelligence is going to replace most jobs. So, how do we navigate these two messages to prepare our students for an unpredictable future? 

Studies show that 40% of today’s jobs will be replaced by AI and robotics in just a few years. That means that 65% of today’s students are going to work in jobs or in roles that do not even exist yet. How do we prepare our students for jobs and roles in society that don’t exist? We have to pivot. Education must empower students today to pivot for tomorrow. We have to prioritize human intelligence over artificial intelligence. Still, we have to use artificial intelligence as assistive intelligence because it is a great tool that can help us become more efficient and move humanity into a more meaningful, equitable, and global future. 

It is such an honor to stand up here before all of you because you guys can change the world. The power in this room to effect change is undeniable. If we are going to make America great again, it isn’t going to be artificial intelligence that will do it. It’s going to be human intelligence. And it isn’t what’s going on in Washington, D.C., that will do it. It’s going to be what’s going on right here with all of you. You are the architects of the future because our students are the future. That’s the power in this room. 

To be successful in life, what you need is an education. My great uncle famously said that, and he not only talked the talk, but he also walked the walk. He was Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. And my aunt, Indira Gandhi, and cousin Rajiv Gandhi also went on to be prime ministers of India. My father got a great education, too, but he didn’t want to go into politics. He immigrated to the United States and became one of the first Indians to work on Wall Street. And my two older brothers followed in his footsteps and became investment bankers. 

So, as you can imagine, the big question in my family was, what’s going to happen to Ravi when he graduates? Things were a little different for me when I was a young kid because I was only 11 years old when my two older brothers went off to college, and I was home alone with my parents. It was at that time that my parents’ marriage started to fall apart and ended two years later in a truly bitter and ugly divorce. I got lost, but I got lost in my ideas and in my curiosity. 

That was great for so many reasons. But the problem with it was that I no longer related to school. All of those facts, figures, and formulas had absolutely no context. And I think it’s because I had a dream from early on. My dream was to become Angus Young of the band AC/DC. The electric guitar. That’s what I wanted. 

I was very fortunate. My mother, on my 11th birthday, bought me my first electric guitar, and I was ready to rock. I mean, I might’ve only been in the backyard, but in my mind, I was playing Madison Square Garden. By the time I got to middle school, I started to have my own bands, and you know, we would play all the really big gigs, like field day, but we thought we were rock stars. We really did. And it was great. But the problem was that by the time I got to high school, I knew what I wanted. I was on my way. I didn’t want to go to school anymore. 

I really didn’t relate to high school, and I just wanted to drop out. There are two reasons why I didn’t: My two music teachers. They were the ones who gave me a reason to get up every day and go to school. They were why I got a well-rounded education, because they motivated me to come. It is so important that we save the arts, that we save sports, that we save all of these other programs in our schools. Schools must not try to be everything to everyone, but they must have something for everyone. That is the value of public schools. That’s the opportunity in providing a great education to our students. 

Part of that excellent education requires the ability to pivot. Our students will have to pivot multiple times throughout their lives because they will live longer. The director of the Harvard Medical School Lab on Aging says the first person to live to 150 has already been born. So, how in 12, 14, 16, 18, 22 years do we educate a child to have a productive 100 years into the future? 

Along with teaching our students how to pivot, we need to inspire curiosity, and we need to encourage our students to keep going. We have to encourage students to keep going until they fail. We don’t teach that. We have an achievement-based education system, but we should be teaching our children how to fail and how to get back up within a safe place like school. 

It’s remarkable the power in our classrooms, but we have to harness it, we have to nurture it, and amazing, amazing things will happen. And we do need principled leadership. I believe principled leadership is simply empowering those below you to rise above you. And if we all do that every day and inspire others, that will make the world a better place.

My great-uncle’s good friend Albert Einstein said, Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one has learned in school. Think about that. It’s our values, it’s our beliefs, our behaviors. That’s what we keep, and that’s what carries us forward in the world. It’s not just what we put in our students’ minds that matters; it’s also what we put in their hearts that matters. 

Michelle Healy is senior editor of American School Board Journal.

A LIFE-CHANGING LESSON
When Ravi Hutheesing informed his father that he was going to drop out of college and pursue his dream of a professional music career, his dad’s response was, “OK, smart guy. Before you do that, I want you to do one thing for me. I want you to write a business plan.” 

No one, up to this point, had ever asked Hutheesing to “articulate my vision,” he said. In retrospect, “I think it’s something that we should ask students to do all the time so that they start thinking ahead and forging a path. Let them know that this (plan) can change at any time. You can rework it. You can pivot. You do what you need to do, but always think with a vision and always proceed with direction and an intended, desired destination.” 

This was probably one of the best lessons “I ever got in my life, and I’m glad that he made me do that,” Hutheesing said. Fortunately, his dad liked his son’s plan. “He looked at it and said, ‘You know what? I can’t fault this. You’ve thought this through. I’m going to support this.”

It was only a few years later that Hutheesing got to perform in Madison Square Garden as the guitar player for Hanson, a group that would become the top-selling band in the world in 1997.