Education for Human Futures
How do we prepare young people for a changing society?
Step by step, building together on the expertise that is already there.
Talks, workshops and sparring on languages, philosophy and citizenship education, now that polarisation and AI are changing how young people communicate, form judgements and live together.
For schools that want to further develop their educational vision and prepare young people for a changing society.
01
Education
School ends with a diploma. What it really gives young people only shows afterwards: in a life they shape themselves, with a personality of their own, work that suits them and enough resilience for difficult times. And in the way they live together with others.
School culture
Education is the task of the whole school, and democracy is an essential part of it. It works best where a school knows what it stands for, and where that vision can be felt: in the classroom and in how people treat one another.
A changing society as an opportunity
Society is changing, and this confronts schools with concrete questions. How do we prepare young people for an increasingly digital way of living together? How does that affect our teaching? And how can subject teams work together on this? At the centre is not, first of all, a subject, but the human being.
02
Human
Humanity is not something we learn alone. We learn it in encounters with others: in finding our way into a foreign language, in thinking together about questions that have no easy answer, in engaging with people who think differently.
Language and encounter
Anyone who learns another language sees the same world through different eyes, and discovers that their own perspective is only one among many. Literature opens up experiences that are not our own. In this way the language lesson practises what living together requires: listening, rephrasing and needing the other.
Judgement
What is fair? Whom can I believe? How do I deal with others thinking differently? Giving these questions room in class strengthens young people's judgement and gives them a sense of being taken seriously and of belonging.
Living together
Democracy is more than a form of government. It is a way of living together. Young people learn it by having a say, sharing in decisions and experiencing that conflict and differing opinions are part of it. Freedom, equal worth and solidarity are not learned from a textbook, but through the way we treat each other.
Communicating, forming judgements and living together are democratic competences. The way we inform ourselves is changing, and with it what is asked of students. School is where they can practise it.
03
Futures
In a world with AI, we can only think of the future in the plural: there is no single future to prepare for.
A child starting school in 2026 will leave it around 2039. We do not know exactly what the world will look like then; we do know that AI will play a part in it. What young people need is not about the optimal technology. They have always developed their judgement in conversation with others, through disagreement. Now they increasingly form their opinions in conversation with systems that tell them they are right. What used to happen by itself must therefore be practised more consciously and more often, and school is the place for it.
Four examples of what is shifting:
Knowledge and trust
Until recently, knowing mostly meant possessing knowledge yourself. When AI provides answers on demand, knowing increasingly means being able to judge whom to believe, and on what grounds. Chatbots sound neutral, but they are not. When the Dutch Data Protection Authority asked four chatbots for voting advice 21,000 times shortly before the Dutch general election, using fictional voter profiles, the political centre all but disappeared from their recommendations.
Source: Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, Dutch Data Protection Authority (2025)
Language and perspective
When AI translates every language, language learning takes on a new meaning. Language models have a perspective too: in an international study, the values of five GPT models most closely resembled those of English-speaking and Protestant European countries. That is one reason they can sound neutral to many of us. Learning a language lets you discover that your own thinking, too, is a perspective. No translation can do that for you.
Source: Tao et al. (2024), PNAS Nexus
Relationships and closeness
Until now, care came primarily from people. In an Austrian survey of 500 young people aged 11 to 17, six in ten turn to chatbots for advice on heartbreak, stress or conflicts, and four in ten often find that more helpful than asking a person. And in an experiment with eleven language models, the models agreed with their users nearly 50 percent more often than people did. It is in the classroom that young people experience what human closeness is: encountering a real person, someone who will sometimes disagree.
Sources: Saferinternet.at (2026); Cheng et al. (2026), Science
Democracy and having a say
Decisions that affect us all are increasingly shaped by AI systems, and those systems carry values and interests. In an American experiment, readers of AI summaries of historical events afterwards saw them slightly differently from readers of Wikipedia, even though every fact was correct. Critical citizens do not just see through this; they have their say.
Source: Shu et al. (2026), PNAS Nexus
School curricula offer valuable starting points for preparing young people to navigate a changing society. From there, you can move forward step by step.
What I offer
Thinking together
I think along with schools about the future of their education, as a sparring partner and as a bridge between subject teams. I bring time, experience and materials, and offer ideas on content. You apply them to your own students and lessons, with all your subject expertise.
For school leaders
How do we give teams the space to develop their own approach to preparing young people for a changing society? Where can colleagues support each other? How does the school become a place where democracy is practised?
You develop your own educational vision and translate it into concrete steps. I think along, with knowledge of the curricula and a view from outside.
For teachers and subject teams
Where in your curriculum are young people already developing the competencies they need for a changing society? How do students learn judgement and engage with disagreement in your subject? What does it mean to learn a language when AI can translate almost anything?
Workshops and training on modern foreign languages, philosophy, and citizenship education across the curriculum. I bring ideas and perspectives; you translate them into your own lessons and context.
For institutions and networks
Talks, workshops and chairing for conferences, study days, universities and associations, on education, language and democracy in a world with AI.
Every collaboration starts with a conversation about your questions.
Let's talk
Or email directly: mail@annarosenbaum.net
About me
A place of encounter
As a pupil, what I found at school above all was the experience of encounter: in theatre, in the choir, on exchanges. I have carried that image of school with me ever since.
I studied languages and philosophy, and that is where questions of living together took hold of me. What do you see of the world through the eyes of another language? How do we deal with moral disagreement? When can I rely on what others tell me? Today these questions take on a new urgency, as the answer increasingly comes from AI.
As a language and philosophy teacher, I wanted to know how young people answer these questions in the classroom. In my lessons I saw how much ethical and existential questions matter to them. At the Goethe-Institut I explored these questions in collaboration with many schools, together with Dutch and German education partners.
What I saw everywhere: talking about these questions lies at the heart of democratic life. With my support, school teams can create time and space to explore these questions together.
I share current projects and thoughts on LinkedIn.
- SchoolTheatre, choir, exchanges
- University of CologneGerman, philosophy, Spanish, educational science; three years at the chair of epistemology
- In front of the classGerman, Spanish, Dutch as a foreign language, philosophy and drama; Gymnasium and Gesamtschule (Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium levels) in Germany; mavo, havo and vwo in Enschede
- Goethe-Institut NiederlandeFour and a half years as Education Expert in the team serving as national point of contact for the quality of German language teaching
- Since September 2026Independent, in the Netherlands and Germany
- German
- Dutch
- English
- Spanish