Look at what comes before the visible success
When we talk about a powerful country, we tend to name the visible things: its industries, inventions, trade or military strength. Education asks us to look earlier, at the people who had to learn how to build, organise and question those things.
In The Changing World Order, Ray Dalio combines eight measures in his account of national power: education, innovation and technology, competitiveness, military strength, trade, economic output, financial-centre strength and reserve-currency status. His archetypal chart places education among the early-rising measures, before several more visible forms of power. It also shows education weakening before some other indicators decline.
The chart is an interpretation of historical patterns. In the 2020 account, Dalio explains that the average gives most weight to the Dutch, British and American cases. It isn’t a record of every society following an identical timetable, or proof that education alone caused their rise.
Use the pattern to ask a better question
A curve that moves first can suggest a relationship worth investigating. Establishing cause requires more: how were the measures constructed, what else changed at the same time, and which cases don’t fit? Wealth can pay for schools; educated people can contribute to wealth. Institutions, access and the opportunities to use knowledge matter too.
For us, the useful question is less about predicting which country will lead next. It’s about the capabilities being built before the results become easy to count. If a student becomes better at explaining a difficult idea, evaluating evidence or correcting a mistake, how do we recognise that progress while it’s still taking shape?
Bring the question down to a lesson
Consider a student learning to interpret a graph. The immediate task may be to earn marks on a science paper. The underlying work is broader: reading a scale, identifying a pattern, distinguishing observation from explanation, and resisting a conclusion the data doesn’t support.
Or take a student revising an essay. They have to decide whether their evidence supports the claim, whether an objection changes it, and whether the conclusion goes beyond what they have shown. These are worthwhile abilities even when there’s no examiner at the end of the process.
We should be able to help students prepare for an assessment while taking those abilities seriously. A correct answer matters. So does being able to explain why it’s correct and recognise when the same reasoning no longer applies.
Think about who gets the chance to practise
If we value understanding, the next practical question is who gets enough help to develop it. A student who gets stuck after class needs a way to ask a question, find a relevant explanation and check another attempt. The experience shouldn’t depend entirely on whether someone happens to be available at that moment.
Technology can help with parts of that problem, but a page full of answers is an incomplete response. The material has to be understandable. The questions have to be relevant. Feedback has to say something the student can act on. And the student needs space to do the work, rather than watch it being done.
Why we’re building NovaLearn
Students with a private tutor get something most students don’t: someone who explains a topic in a way that makes sense to them, notices where they’re stuck and has them try again until it clicks. That kind of attention has usually depended on money, and on someone being free at the right moment.
NovaLearn is our attempt to give every student that attention: lessons for their course, a tutor to talk ideas through with, and practice with feedback that shows what to work on next. We think that’s worth building. It still has to prove itself in a real study session, and that’s the test we hold it to.
Keep the purpose larger than the ranking
A society’s position in a power index is one way to discuss the value of education. It isn’t the only one. Being able to read carefully, examine a claim and make an informed choice matters in a person’s life even when no national ranking changes.
That’s the part of this discussion we want to keep close to the product. When a student asks ‘Why?’, there should be a way to work towards an answer they understand. Helping that happen, repeatedly and for more people, is a goal worth building around.