What Kind of Next Generation Do We Want?

A few days ago, I explored the question of the emergence of two distinct human species.

Equipped with tools such as education for autonomy and responsibility, or tools as powerful as Participatory Science, we can very seriously ask ourselves a new question: What Kind of Next Generation Do We Want?

We are trying to prepare children for tomorrow’s world. But are we certain that we are not leaving them ill-equipped?

We often ask ourselves how to offer future generations a better life. Families, institutions and countries mobilize considerable resources to improve education, health, safety, academic achievement and access to technology. The intention is generally sincere: to help raise human beings who are better educated, freer, more capable and better protected.

Yet some of the daily routines designed to achieve this objective produce exactly the opposite effect.

We want to protect children from boredom, so we fill every silence with a screen. We want to spare them from failure, so we deprive them of opportunities to learn how to fall, try again and persevere. We want to ensure their academic success, so we overload their days to the point of reducing their sleep, movement, free play, relationships and time spent in nature. We want to protect them, so we prevent them from making the decisions, taking the measured risks and assuming the responsibilities that would enable them to become prudent. We want to give them access to all knowledge, yet we sometimes accustom them to receiving an answer before they have even formulated a question.

The same paradox appears at the national level. To improve their competitiveness, some education systems multiply assessments, standardize learning pathways and concentrate their efforts on what can be measured quickly. They may therefore improve indicators while weakening initiative, curiosity, cooperation, the ability to investigate, practical skills and the courage to act in a situation for which there is no answer key.

We are gradually removing uncertainty from everyday life at the very moment when future generations will have to face a world marked by unprecedented ecological, technological, economic and geopolitical transformations. We are automating intellectual processes at the very moment when we need to strengthen judgment. We are making lives more comfortable while risking making people less capable of acting when that comfort disappears.

The question is therefore no longer merely how to pass more on to children, but rather what kind of next generation do we truly want to raise?

What Kind of World Do We Want to Pass On?

We speak a great deal about the futures we want to prevent. We speak less precisely about the human capacities that would need to be preserved in order to endure them.

Which collapses would seem least serious to us? The collapse of certain infrastructures, or that of our ability to organize ourselves when they no longer function? The collapse of certain economic models, or that of our capacity to care for one another? The collapse of certain technologies, or that of our attention, judgment and collective memory? The collapse of our certainties, or that of our ability to learn through direct contact with reality?

Conversely, which emergences do we want to make possible?

Do we want to welcome generations that are highly proficient in the use of tools, but incapable of acting without them? Generations capable of instantly accessing billions of pieces of information, but less capable of distinguishing tested knowledge from a plausible assertion? Generations protected from all discomfort, but helpless in the face of contradiction, loss, loneliness or effort?

Or do we want to raise people capable of thinking with technologies without delegating their thinking to them, of cooperating without giving up their discernment, of assuming responsibility without waiting for an authority to provide them with every instruction, of producing knowledge, repairing, investigating, deciding and caring?

This question calls for neither technological panic nor nostalgia. It is not about returning to an idealized past. It is about understanding that every organization of daily life trains certain faculties and allows others to wither. Every educational policy, every piece of equipment, every timetable, every investment and every renunciation contributes to producing a certain type of human being.

Education does not merely prepare for a future. It helps to select it.

We Risk Confusing Transmission With Making Answers Available

Transmission is one of the founding acts through which human beings give themselves a common world. It is neither a cultural supplement nor a school formality. No child comes into the world with the language, symbolic reference points, social dispositions, knowledge and habits that will enable them to live with others. Each generation receives a world already underway, incorporates it, transforms it, then consciously or unconsciously chooses what it will carry forward.

Humanity is therefore sustained not only by its biological capacities. It endures through this collective heritage, gradually incorporated into each individual.

Artificial intelligence is not merely an additional tool within this transmission. It changes the material nature of traces, the places where we seek authority, the forms of memory, modes of learning and the operations we had until now regarded as specifically human. It forces us to determine what can be automated, what can be assisted and what should never be fully delegated.

The first mistake would be to confuse transmission with information.

Receiving an answer does not mean learning. Accessing a summary does not mean knowing how to produce one. Reading a line of reasoning does not mean having constructed the intellectual operations required to verify it. Genuine learning often requires encountering resistance, recognizing an error, reorganizing an initial representation, tolerating a period of incomprehension and confronting one’s idea with that of another person.

Cognitive conflict is not an anomaly in the learning process. It is often one of its driving forces.

Children, adolescents and adults learn through social interaction, speech, experimentation, movement, concrete manipulation, observation and relationships of attachment. They learn because someone answers them, contradicts them, reassures them, waits for them, trusts them or invites them to try again. They also learn because reality does not immediately conform to their expectations.

A technology designed to reduce friction can be extremely useful. But an education that removed all friction would also remove some of the conditions required for learning.

Instant answers may therefore reduce the space of the unknown before the learner has had time to explore it. They may damage attention if they constantly replace prolonged observation. They may flatten intellectual obstacles if they bypass them before the student has developed the means to overcome them. They may also create the belief that every problem already has a stable formulation and an immediately available solution.

Yet a large proportion of the problems future generations will face will not be properly formulated. They will have to determine what is happening, identify missing information, observe contradictory signals, work with people who do not share the same interests and make decisions without complete certainty.

We must therefore learn to use artificial intelligence without allowing it to eliminate the necessary stages of doubt, inquiry and effort.

The risk does not lie in the existence of the machine. It arises when we permanently externalize a faculty without continuing to exercise it. The automation of writing, translation, summarization, planning, memorization, calculation or navigation does not mechanically cause deskilling. It does, however, increase the possibility of it when users no longer acquire the skills that would enable them to understand, control, correct or replace the tool.

A generation may become remarkably proficient in the use of artificial intelligence while becoming less capable of carrying out certain intellectual operations on its own. This development is not inevitable. It depends on how we design tools, learning processes and rules of use.

Educational artificial intelligence should help learners think rather than continually think in their place. It should ask questions, reveal contradictions, offer graduated guidance, request justification, encourage the comparison of hypotheses and make the limits of its answers visible. It should be able to adapt to different cognitive profiles without confining a person within a supposedly fixed profile.

The objective should not be to obtain a correct output as quickly as possible. It should be to increase the learner’s ability to produce, verify, explain and transfer what they have understood.

Transmission also relies on realities that machines cannot replace: relationships, attachment, presence, material and symbolic security, adult responsibility and the feeling of belonging to a shared history. A child does not learn solely because information is accurate. They learn because it is addressed to them within a relationship in which they feel recognized and capable of making progress.

This relational dimension includes storytelling. A society transmits by recounting where its knowledge comes from, why certain choices were made, which mistakes were committed, which struggles made certain rights possible and which responsibilities accompany the freedoms received. It does not transmit results alone. It transmits paths, controversies, losses, bifurcations and reasons for acting.

It also transmits a relationship with solitude, limits and vulnerability.

The ability to be alone for a while, not to receive immediate stimulation, to remain with an unresolved question or to endure an absence contributes to the construction of thought. Vulnerability is not merely a flaw to be eliminated. It is one of the conditions through which human beings recognize their need for others, develop their attention and discover the limits of their own power.

Transmission therefore requires adult responsibility. Caring for a child, an elderly parent, a vulnerable relative or a community does not consist solely of providing them with services. It means assuming a presence, continuity and commitments that cannot be fully automated.

Human beings also remain embodied beings. Living knowledge circulates through gestures, gazes, postures, movements and practices. Knowledge that is merely described but never experienced often remains fragile. Understanding a natural environment cannot be reduced to looking at images of it. Understanding a material cannot be reduced to reading about its properties. Understanding cooperation cannot be reduced to knowing its principles. One must encounter the terrain, manipulate, act, feel resistance and observe the consequences of one’s decisions.

Transmission therefore concerns movement, the desire to investigate and the way we inhabit the world just as much as it concerns the content itself.

This possible weakening of our faculties is compounded by a material paradox. The digital world gives the impression of unlimited space even though it depends on physical infrastructure, materials, water, energy, networks and data centers. The more content we generate, duplicate and store, the more resources we consume to preserve it.

At the same time, part of digital culture is already disappearing. Pages, forums, archives, creations, academic databases and image collections become inaccessible as formats, companies, media and infrastructure evolve. Accumulation therefore does not guarantee memory. It can produce a volatile culture, saturated with ephemeral traces and incapable of identifying what deserves to be preserved over time.

Transmission does not mean preserving everything. Transmission requires choices.

We must decide what is meaningful, what should remain accessible, what deserves to be documented and in which forms knowledge will still be understandable to those who receive it. A civilization that stores everything without establishing priorities eventually loses what matters most in the noise. Conversely, a civilization that selects without debate risks erasing indispensable experiences and voices.

The solution lies in an explicit policy of memory: durable archives, open formats, distributed copies, publicly debated preservation criteria, digital sufficiency and education that enables people to distinguish a meaningful trace from merely abundant content.

Another transformation deserves particular vigilance: the development of avatars, synthetic voices and digital doubles intended to artificially prolong a person’s presence after death. Systems can already be trained using writings, images and videos in order to produce a posthumous interlocutor capable of responding in a familiar style.

These technologies may be presented as tools for memory or consolation. They may also profoundly alter our relationship with grief, absence, finitude and irreversibility. A bereaved parent could be invited to continue watching a virtual representation of their child grow. Descendants could maintain a simulated conversation with an ancestor. The trace would no longer simply be consulted: it would give the appearance of presence and agency.

We must examine these uses before they become widespread. Who will decide what an avatar may say? How will historical speech be distinguished from algorithmic generation? Who will own the data of a deceased person? How can people in mourning be protected from economic models built on their attachment? What limits should be established when a simulation prevents the loss from being fully acknowledged?

Accepting finitude, experiencing grief and recognizing the irreversibility of certain situations are not technical failures awaiting a solution. These experiences contribute to the way we assign value to time, relationships and transmission.

The answer is not to oppose human beings to machines. It is to restore transmission to the full depth of experience.

This requires irreplaceable relational time, spaces without automated assistance, explicit education in attention, mastery of fundamental skills before their automation, technologies designed to support reasoning, restraint in data production, governance of digital memories and special protection for vulnerable people.

We must not ask only what artificial intelligence can accomplish. We must decide which human faculties we want to continue exercising, even when a machine can reproduce them more quickly. The issue is not a spectacular catastrophe. It is a slow erosion of our capacities to receive, experience, choose and transmit to one another.

Putting Experiential Learning Back at the Heart of Education

Experiential learning constitutes one of the strongest responses to the risk of disembodied knowledge. It is opposed neither to theory, nor to digital technology, nor to artificial intelligence. It restores their proper function: to illuminate, prepare, document or extend an action instead of replacing it.

Learning through experience does not simply mean “doing an activity.” An occupation can be physically very active while producing little learning. Experience becomes educational when a person acts with an intention, encounters the consequences of their action, observes what happened, compares interpretations, modifies their approach and tries again.

It produces a complete cycle: act, experience, understand, conceptualize, try again.

This cycle develops capacities that purely declarative teaching reaches with greater difficulty. It teaches learners to connect knowledge to a situation, detect the differences between a model and reality, identify missing information and adjust their behavior when circumstances change.

In a classroom, a student can learn the principles of cooperation. In a real project, they discover that roles must be distributed, help must be requested, a delay must be reported, an objection must be heard, an instruction must be reformulated and the consequences of an unfulfilled commitment must be assumed. They understand that cooperation is not an abstract value, but a demanding practice.

They can study biodiversity in a textbook. In the field, they must learn to look, wait, acknowledge uncertainty, record an observation and accept that they may not immediately identify what they encounter. The environment does not provide them with an ordered list of answers. It forces them to construct their attention.

They can learn the principles of mechanics. By making or repairing an object, they encounter tolerances, measurement errors, material constraints, the tools available and the consequences of an imprecise gesture. They discover that knowledge does not abolish reality: it makes it possible to negotiate with it more effectively.

Experience thus strengthens the transfer of learning. Knowledge memorized in a single context risks remaining tied to the form in which it was taught. Knowledge mobilized in several situations becomes more flexible. The learner no longer merely recognizes an exercise. They know how to identify the structure of a problem beneath different appearances.

This capacity will be decisive in a world where many routine tasks will be automated. Human value will not lie solely in carrying out a known procedure, but in the ability to understand a singular situation, choose the relevant tools, detect their errors and act when the usual procedure is no longer sufficient.

Experiential learning also gives error a constructive status. In a system oriented mainly toward the correct answer, error can become evidence of incompetence. In an experimental approach, it becomes information about the relationship between a hypothesis, an action and a result.

This does not mean that all errors are desirable or that children should be exposed to unnecessary risks. It means that an educational environment must allow reversible, observable and analyzable errors. An error without consequences sometimes teaches nothing. An error with disproportionate consequences prevents learning. The challenge is to organize situations in which a person can experience the reality of their choices without being crushed by them.

Experience then builds a confidence that is more solid than simple verbal encouragement. A child does not feel capable only because they are repeatedly told that they are. They acquire confidence based on lived evidence: they have prepared a meal, repaired an object, organized a journey, presented an investigation, resolved a conflict, cared for an animal, conducted an observation or carried a project through to completion.

This confidence is neither an illusion of omnipotence nor a dependence on approval. It takes the form of a more realistic conviction: “I do not yet know how to do everything, but I know how to learn, ask for help, persevere and correct my actions.”

Experience also increases motivation when it makes it possible to understand the purpose of learning. Many students do not reject effort itself. They reject effort whose purpose and relationship to their lives they cannot perceive.

A mathematical skill takes on a different status when it makes it possible to build, budget, measure a phenomenon or analyze data collected by the group. Writing takes on a different status when it serves to persuade a partner, document a discovery, transmit a method or draw attention to an injustice. Geography gains a different depth when it makes it possible to prepare a route, understand a watershed, analyze a conflict of use or compare living conditions.

Knowledge is then no longer an obstacle placed between the student and their future. It becomes a means of increasing their capacity to act.

Experiential learning also makes it possible to integrate the body. Yet prolonged immobility, fragmented attention and the separation between intellectual and practical activities impoverish part of the learning process. Movement supports observation, spatial memory, sensory adjustment and the understanding of concrete causal relationships.

Walking through a landscape, handling tools, cultivating, building, cooking, caring, navigating, measuring or experimenting simultaneously mobilizes intellectual, motor, social and emotional faculties. This integration produces richer memories and more closely connected knowledge.

Experience also teaches temporality. Some processes cannot be accelerated without being distorted. A plant grows at its own pace. A relationship of trust is built through continuity. A rigorous investigation requires repeated observations. A well-made object requires trials and corrections. A conflict does not disappear because a quick answer has been proposed.

In a culture of immediacy, experiencing these temporalities is already an education.

Finally, experiential learning exposes learners to a plurality of viewpoints. In a real situation, the criteria for success are not always unique. A technically effective solution may be too costly, ecologically questionable or socially unacceptable. A project that is useful to one group may impose a constraint on another. A choice then requires arbitration between several legitimate values.

The learner thus discovers that decision-making cannot be reduced to applying knowledge. It entails responsibility.

To generalize this approach, however, it is necessary to move beyond occasional and peripheral activities. An annual outing or a project week is not sufficient if the rest of the educational organization values only the individual reproduction of standardized content.

Every learning pathway should include long-term projects, field investigations, real production situations, collective responsibilities, encounters with professionals, missions useful to a territory and moments of reflective analysis. Experience must be prepared, supported and reviewed. Without this process of making meaning, it may remain anecdotal or reproduce inequalities between those who already possess the codes needed to benefit from it and those who do not.

The role of the adult then becomes more demanding, not less important. They no longer merely deliver an answer. They design a framework, make risks acceptable, observe dynamics, support people in difficulty, help put the experience into words and provide the necessary knowledge at the moment when it becomes intelligible.

Assessment must also evolve. It cannot focus solely on the final product. It must recognize the quality of the process, the ability to document an error, progress, cooperation, reliability, initiative, consideration of constraints and the transfer of learning to a new situation.

It is also necessary to preserve moments when the learner works without algorithmic assistance, followed by moments when they use the tool critically. For example, they can first formulate their hypotheses, conduct an observation and produce an initial analysis. They can then ask an artificial intelligence to identify objections, compare proposals, check formulations or suggest overlooked variables. Finally, they must decide what they retain, what they reject and why.

Artificial intelligence then becomes a methodological interlocutor, not a substitute for experience.

This transformation requires places: workshops, laboratories, gardens, kitchens, natural environments, associations, businesses, farms, public institutions, cultural venues and fabrication spaces. It also requires uninterrupted time, because a project constantly interrupted by short sequences does not always allow learners to engage deeply with a situation.

Above all, it requires institutional trust. Accepting experiential learning means recognizing that part of the outcome cannot be fully predicted. It means giving up control over every minute in order to better guarantee the quality of the process. It means accepting that several groups may achieve comparable learning outcomes by following different paths.

We want generations capable of innovating. We must therefore allow them to experiment.

We want resilient generations. We must allow them to encounter graduated difficulties.

We want generations that know how to cooperate. We must entrust them with projects whose success genuinely depends on others.

We want generations capable of using technologies with discernment. We must give them a sufficiently rich experience of the world so that they can compare the outputs of machines with something they have actually observed, made, felt and understood.

Making Participatory Science an Educational and Democratic Infrastructure

Participatory Science offers a particularly powerful response to the weakening of our relationship with reality. It does not consist of asking the public to mechanically reproduce actions designed elsewhere. It enables citizens, students, professionals, associations and researchers to contribute to a shared investigation: formulating questions, collecting observations, producing or interpreting data, testing hypotheses and discussing the consequences.

It transforms science from a body of results to be learned into a collective practice to be experienced.

In a context in which information is abundant, generated content is becoming difficult to distinguish from human-produced content and trust in institutions is weakening, this direct experience of the scientific method becomes decisive.

A person who has participated in an investigation better understands why an observation must be described precisely, why a protocol limits certain interpretations, why an isolated piece of data is insufficient and why a result may be revised without science thereby becoming arbitrary.

They discover that scientific knowledge is neither one opinion among others nor a certainty that has fallen from the sky. It results from a demanding organization of doubt.

Participating in research teaches people to distinguish what has been seen, what has been measured, what has been interpreted and what remains unknown. This distinction constitutes essential protection against disinformation. It makes it possible not to assign the same value to an appealing claim, sincere testimony, a statistical correlation and a conclusion supported by several independent methods.

Participatory Science also trains attention. Observing a bird, an insect, water quality, a type of soil, a temperature variation, an urban use or an astronomical phenomenon often requires slowing down. One must learn to recognize, compare, record, photograph, sample, measure or return to the same place.

The environment ceases to be a backdrop. It becomes a readable living environment.

This transformation of perception produces a profound educational effect. What one has learned to observe becomes more difficult to ignore. A river whose temperature, turbidity or biodiversity is regularly measured is no longer an abstraction. A wetland monitored over several seasons is no longer merely an available surface on a map. A glacier documented year after year becomes a visible history. Pollution is no longer merely general information: it has a location, a temporality, possible causes and consequences to be discussed.

Knowledge can thus strengthen a sense of responsibility without resorting to guilt.

Participatory Science also makes it possible to produce volumes of observations that a professional team might sometimes be unable to collect on its own. Large networks can cover vast territories, monitor phenomena over time and quickly report changes. They also contribute local knowledge, practices and perceptions that conventional scientific systems do not always capture.

But their value is not limited to increasing the amount of data. Their major contribution lies in creating a community of inquiry.

People from different generations, professions and backgrounds can work on the same question. A researcher contributes a theoretical and methodological framework. A resident knows how a place has changed. A professional possesses practical experience. A child sometimes notices what adults no longer see. An association understands the social relationships and needs of the territory.

Research becomes a space for translation between several forms of knowledge.

This cooperation can restore some trust between science, society and public decision-making. Distrust often arises when citizens see only a final result, communicated in specialized language, without understanding how it was obtained or what uncertainties accompany it. Participating in one stage of the investigation makes the method more visible and its limitations more understandable.

This does not eliminate disagreements. It makes it possible to shift them toward more precise questions: is the protocol appropriate? Are the observations representative? Which competing hypotheses should be tested? Which interests are concerned? What can reasonably be concluded?

Conflict becomes more fruitful when it concerns elements that can be examined.

Participatory Science also develops political capacity in the most concrete sense. It enables a population to document a situation before requesting action. A community that measures changes in a coastline, air quality, water availability or biodiversity has a stronger basis for dialogue with an administration, a company or a scientific institution.

This capacity must, however, be protected against two forms of misuse.

The first would consist of using citizens as unpaid labor to collect data without giving them access to the questions, results or decisions. Participation limited to execution can be useful, but it should not be presented as scientific co-decision if participants have no influence over the project.

The second form of misuse would be to suggest that all contributions automatically have the same scientific value. Participation does not eliminate the requirements of method, training, quality control and transparency. On the contrary, it requires making them accessible and shareable.

A serious program must specify what is being observed, how, for what purpose, with what limitations and under whose responsibility. It must organize data validation, document possible biases and enable participants to understand what becomes of their contributions.

Data governance is central. Who owns the data? Who may use it? Could it reveal the location of vulnerable species, information about individuals or sensitive practices? Can participants access the consolidated results? Can a company reuse a collectively constructed database free of charge? How can contributions be acknowledged without exposing individuals?

These are not administrative questions. They determine the trust and sustainability of the system.

Participatory Science can also reduce certain inequalities in access to science, provided that its design does not reproduce ordinary forms of exclusion. A project based exclusively on a recent smartphone, expensive travel, constant connectivity or specialized vocabulary will not be genuinely open.

It is therefore necessary to provide shared equipment, protocols that can be carried out offline, training, translations, facilitators, formats adapted to different ages and recognition of the skills already present within communities.

Participants must also receive feedback. Too many initiatives mobilize people for data collection whose results they never see. This silence turns a promise of participation into extraction. Every contributor should be able to understand what the data revealed, which uncertainties remain, which decisions were influenced and which new questions are emerging.

Reporting back should not be regarded as the final stage of communication. It is part of the scientific process and the moral contract of participation.

At school, Participatory Science can connect several disciplines around the same investigation. Monitoring water quality mobilizes chemistry, biology, mathematics, geography, the history of uses, law, writing, mapping and democratic debate. An astronomical observation can connect physics, mathematics, programming, the history of science, photography and international cooperation.

This interdisciplinarity does not dilute knowledge. It shows why different forms of knowledge must first be distinguished and then connected.

Students also discover that science is not reserved for people who already know the answer. It often begins with ignorance formulated well enough to become an investigable question.

This stance is particularly important in relation to artificial intelligence. A machine can rapidly generate an explanation, propose a protocol or simulate data. But it does not replace the responsibility to verify that the phenomenon described exists, that the measurement is appropriate, that local conditions are taken into account and that the interpretation respects the limitations of the observation.

Participatory Science gives learners a real-world reference point from which to evaluate algorithmic outputs. They can ask the tool to compare hypotheses, detect inconsistencies or help visualize data. But they also know that the plausibility of an answer does not guarantee that it corresponds to conditions on the ground.

To make this approach a genuine educational infrastructure, each territory could have permanent participatory observatories connected to schools, universities, associations, local authorities and research centers. Projects would not be limited to one-off campaigns. They would monitor phenomena over several years and enable successive generations to continue an investigation begun before them.

Transmission would become visible: new participants would receive the data, methods and questions of those who came before them, then enrich this heritage.

Public, philanthropic and private funding should recognize that these systems simultaneously produce several forms of value: knowledge, scientific education, environmental vigilance, territorial cooperation, data useful for decision-making and citizens’ capacity to act.

Funding must therefore support not only tools and data-collection campaigns, but also training, facilitation, governance, reporting back, community maintenance, long-term archiving and the translation of results into decisions.

A project that funds sensors but not human relationships produces data without a community. A project that funds communication but not methodological rigor produces enthusiasm without knowledge. A project that funds research but gives nothing back to participants produces distrust.

Participatory Science succeeds when it holds together scientific quality, social usefulness and the dignity of participation.

It can help raise a generation that does not merely consume knowledge, but knows how to contribute to its production. A generation that does not ask only “what should we think?”, but “how do we know?”, “what would we need to observe?” and “what can we verify together?”.

Restoring the Lived Dimension of Autonomy and Responsibility

We readily value autonomy in educational discourse. Yet we often organize daily lives in which children and adolescents make few real decisions, assume few consequences and contribute little to the practical functioning of their community.

They are asked to be autonomous in carrying out tasks defined by adults, while rarely being given the power to determine a priority, allocate resources, choose a method, solve a collective problem or repair the consequences of a mistake.

This form of autonomy remains merely formal.

Lived autonomy does not mean the absence of rules, abandonment by adults or the possibility of doing whatever one wants. It refers to the progressive capacity to understand a situation, make a decision, act, ask for help when necessary and assume the effects of one’s choice.

It is built within a framework of trust and graduated limits.

A child becomes autonomous when adults stop systematically doing in their place what they can learn to do themselves. This can begin with preparing their belongings, taking part in household tasks, organizing part of their time, caring for a space, travelling along a familiar route or resolving a simple disagreement.

As they grow older, responsibilities may involve a budget, the organization of a project, a mission serving the group, an investigation, a repair, the preparation of a journey, responsibility for equipment or the representation of their peers.

Responsibility must be real in order to produce its effects. A fictitious mission whose failure changes nothing does little to develop reliability. A useful mission requires anticipation, communication, verification and sometimes acknowledging that one will not be able to fulfil the commitment alone.

This lived experience transforms the relationship with effort. Effort is no longer an arbitrary requirement imposed from outside. It becomes what makes it possible to achieve an objective to which the person genuinely contributes.

Responsibility also teaches consequences. In environments where adults immediately correct every oversight, replace every lost object, arbitrate every conflict and prevent all frustration, a child can hardly build a stable understanding of the connection between their choices and their effects.

This is not about allowing failures to accumulate or punishing every mistake. It is about allowing proportionate and repairable consequences to exist. If equipment has not been prepared, a solution will have to be found. If a collective commitment has not been honoured, it will have to be explained and the person will have to contribute to repairing the situation. If a budget has been poorly allocated, priorities will have to be reconsidered.

Repair educates more effectively than humiliation.

An education in responsibility does not seek to produce people who never make mistakes. It develops people capable of acknowledging a mistake, understanding its effects and acting to restore what has been damaged.

This competence will become essential in societies confronted with complex choices. Future generations will probably have to manage consequences produced before they were born: ecological disruption, ageing infrastructure, debt, inequalities, technological dependencies and transformations in employment. They will not be able to repair everything, but they will have to decide what they will take responsibility for, with whom and according to which priorities.

It would be inconsistent to suddenly demand this responsibility from them in adulthood after having organized their entire youth around protection, conformity and obedience to instructions.

Autonomy also develops judgment in relation to risk. A person who has been protected from every uncertain situation does not automatically become prudent. On the contrary, they may underestimate danger, overestimate their abilities or remain permanently dependent on those who assess risks for them.

Prudence is learned by encountering graduated, supervised and analysed risks: using a tool, cooking, travelling, moving through a natural environment, speaking in front of a group, managing a sum of money, conducting an experiment, organizing an activity or intervening in a conflict.

The objective is not risk-taking for its own sake. It is the capacity to distinguish between an unacceptable danger, a manageable risk and a difficulty that is merely uncomfortable.

This distinction is often lacking in contemporary organizations. The legitimate pursuit of safety can lead to treating every uncertainty as a threat. It then reduces opportunities to acquire the competence that will make people genuinely safer: knowing how to observe, prepare, decide, withdraw or ask for support.

Lived autonomy also teaches that absolute independence is an illusion. An autonomous person does not do everything alone. They know their limits, know how to mobilize resources, cooperate and respect the interdependencies from which they benefit.

This understanding protects against two opposing tendencies: passive dependence and individualism.

An educational community should therefore entrust its members with responsibilities that genuinely contribute to the common good: maintaining a place, welcoming newcomers, passing on a skill, preparing an activity, caring for a living being, organizing the circulation of information, solving a practical problem or representing the group within a body.

When a person realizes that others partly depend on their reliability, they discover an essential dimension of citizenship. They are no longer merely the beneficiary of a service. They become a contributor.

The lived experience of responsibility also develops empathy. Caring for a younger child, an elderly person, an animal, a garden or shared equipment requires taking into account a rhythm and needs that do not coincide with one’s own. Care ceases to be a declared value. It becomes sustained attention.

This dimension is particularly important in the face of the development of automated services. When many needs can be met without human contact, we risk losing certain ordinary opportunities to learn patience, reciprocity and recognition.

A society in which everyone receives personalized services is not necessarily a society in which everyone knows how to care for others.

Autonomy must also be exercised in governance. Children and adolescents can participate in defining certain rules, allocating resources, organizing projects and assessing collective functioning. This participation does not mean that all decisions belong to them or that adults relinquish their role.

It means that rules are also objects of understanding and responsibility.

When a group participates in developing a rule, it discovers divergent interests, constraints, exceptions and unforeseen effects. It learns that democracy is not the immediate satisfaction of every preference, but the organization of lasting disagreement within a common framework.

This experience prepares people for civic life more effectively than simply memorizing institutions.

However, participation must not be turned into a performance. Asking young people for their opinion on decisions that have already been made produces cynicism. Entrusting them with choices without resources or support produces failure. Serious participation must clarify what can be decided, what cannot be decided, which constraints exist and how proposals will be handled.

Responsibility finally requires a coherent relationship with adults. Adults must accept that they cannot control everything, but they cannot withdraw. They determine the acceptable level of risk, guarantee fundamental safety, intervene when the person cannot yet handle the situation alone and maintain expectations.

Kindness does not consist of removing every expectation. It consists of creating the conditions in which an expectation can become formative rather than overwhelming.

To develop this autonomy, families can give children a daily contribution suited to their age, beyond tidying their own space. Educational institutions can incorporate lasting responsibilities, project budgets, journeys prepared by students, repair workshops, governance councils and missions serving the local area.

Local authorities can create spaces in which young people can move around, experiment, meet and act with proportionate supervision. Associations can offer long-term projects in which responsibilities gradually increase. Companies can open up opportunities for observation, learning and real production instead of limiting themselves to presentations about professions.

Residential programmes, journeys, expeditions, work projects, scientific projects and immersions in nature have particular value in this respect. They temporarily remove certain routines and make interdependencies visible. Participants must prepare their equipment, manage time, contribute to meals, take the weather into account, support someone who is tired, follow a protocol and respond to the unexpected.

These experiences should not be considered peripheral leisure activities reserved for those who can afford them. They constitute major educational situations and should be accessible to everyone.

Artificial intelligence can support this autonomy if it is used as a tool for enhancement rather than as a permanent tutor. It can help prepare a project, explore scenarios, translate information or identify resources. But the person must continue to formulate their own objectives, verify the results, decide and bear final responsibility.

When a tool gives a recommendation, the user should be able to answer three questions: what information is this recommendation based on? What could make it inappropriate? Who will bear the consequences if it is followed?

Without this responsibility, automation can produce a strange situation: everyone has extremely powerful assistance, but no one fully recognizes themselves as the author of the decisions made.

Lived autonomy is therefore a condition of future freedom. A person who does not know how to act without instructions will remain dependent, even if they possess many rights. A person who has never assumed real responsibility will find it difficult to exercise power with discernment. A person who has never contributed to a collective may come to regard society solely as a set of services to which they are entitled.

The next generation must not only learn how to succeed within existing systems. It must become capable of maintaining, repairing and transforming those systems when they no longer meet human needs.

The Future Is in Our Hands, but Not Only in Our Intentions

The next generation will not be produced solely by school curricula. It will be shaped by all the environments we organize: families, educational institutions, media, platforms, territories, leisure activities, public policies, businesses and economic models.

We can raise people who are accustomed to receiving answers, services, recommendations and protections quickly. We can also raise people capable of questioning, investigating, experimenting, contributing, deciding, repairing and caring.

These two directions are not entirely mutually exclusive. Technologies can free up time, broaden access to knowledge, compensate for certain difficulties and considerably increase our capacities. But the time freed must be reinvested in experience, relationships, attention, creation and responsibility. Otherwise, automation does not liberate human beings: it gradually atrophies the faculties they cease to exercise.

The future is therefore in our hands in an extremely concrete sense. It depends on what we decide to fund, the time we protect and the activities to which we grant legitimacy.

A family chooses between an additional hour of digital consumption and an hour devoted to making, cooking, walking, discussing or caring.

An educational institution chooses between further increasing the time devoted to standardized instruction and opening up a project involving investigation, cooperation or real action.

A local authority chooses between creating a completely prescribed space and allowing young people to explore it and contribute to its transformation.

A State chooses between measuring primarily the reproduction of knowledge and also recognizing autonomy, cooperation, reasoning, creativity, reliability and the capacity to act.

A philanthropist chooses between funding a visible activity on a one-off basis and providing lasting support to the teams, places and communities that make experiential learning accessible.

An investor chooses between accelerating tools that capture attention and developing economic models that increase human capacities, shared knowledge, the quality of relationships and the resilience of territories.

A technology company chooses between maximizing user dependence and designing a tool that progressively gives users greater autonomy.

It is therefore not enough to declare that we want better generations. We must verify that the daily organizations we fund genuinely cultivate the qualities we claim to desire.

With every educational, technological or economic decision, we should ask a simple question: does this activity increase or reduce a person’s capacity to understand, decide, cooperate and act without depending entirely on a system they do not control?

Then a second: does this activity make it possible to care for a common world, or merely to succeed individually within it for a time?

Many activities already exist that are capable of strengthening future generations: project-based learning, Participatory Science, educational residential programmes, expeditions, fabrication workshops, territorial investigations, mentoring, shared governance, artistic practices, intergenerational cooperation, immersion in nature, community involvement, care, repair and responsible entrepreneurship.

The question is not whether these solutions exist.

The question is what place we decide to give them in our choices, policies, schedules and budgets.

This is where our responsibility lies. In the time and money we invest. In the activities we make accessible or allow to become privileges. In what philanthropy chooses to support. In what investment chooses to make profitable. In what public authorities choose to recognize as essential infrastructure.

We can bequeath to future generations tools more powerful than any we have ever possessed. But these tools will constitute progress only if the people who use them remain capable of thinking, choosing and taking responsibility for what they do with them.

The next generation may be more assisted, more connected and better informed than any before it.

It is up to us to decide whether it will also be more autonomous, more responsible, more attentive, more cooperative and more alive.