Preparing Students for a World That May Play by Different Rules

by Michael Keany

September, 2026

For most of the lives of today’s educators, American schools have prepared students for adulthood against a relatively stable geopolitical backdrop. The United States was the dominant global power, democracy appeared to be expanding, international institutions mattered, and economic globalization seemed likely to bind nations ever more closely together.

That future can no longer be assumed.

A September 1 New York Times opinion essay examining the changing world order raises a question with profound implications beyond diplomacy: What happens if today’s students inherit a world in which American leadership is less dominant, alliances are less certain, competing powers establish different rules, and economic and political relationships become increasingly transactional?

Recent international-relations scholarship similarly describes an emerging “multi-order” world characterized by fragmentation, competing centers of power, and different conceptions of political and economic life. (DOI⁠)

K–12 schools should not tell students what to think about this emerging world. They should make certain students are capable of thinking about it.

That distinction is essential.

Global Literacy Is Becoming Civic Literacy

Students need considerably more knowledge of the world than many currently receive. Geography, world history, economics, government, religion, culture, and international relations should not be treated as peripheral subjects.

A student graduating in 2035 should understand why China, India, Russia, Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East matter—and recognize that nations may view democracy, sovereignty, human rights, markets, security and America’s role very differently.

Indeed, scholars increasingly argue that the future may consist not of one universally accepted international order but of several overlapping systems with different values, institutions and centers of influence. (OUP Academic⁠)

Understanding those perspectives does not require endorsing them. It requires intellectual sophistication.

Teach Students to Live With Uncertainty

Schools traditionally reward finding the correct answer. The emerging world will frequently require something different: making responsible decisions when no clearly correct answer exists.

Should America defend a threatened ally? Should economic relationships continue with authoritarian governments? Should national interests outweigh international agreements? What happens when democratic values conflict with economic interests?

These are ideal classroom questions precisely because reasonable people can disagree about them.

Students should routinely examine competing evidence, identify assumptions, distinguish facts from arguments, evaluate sources and revise conclusions when circumstances change.

Those abilities will become even more important in an information environment filled with artificial intelligence, propaganda, misinformation and sophisticated political persuasion.

Teach Democracy Without Pretending It Is Inevitable

Schools also have an obligation to teach democratic principles unapologetically while avoiding political indoctrination.

Students should understand constitutional government, individual liberty, freedom of expression, independent courts, peaceful transfers of power and the rule of law. But they should also study authoritarian governments and competing political systems seriously enough to understand why millions of people live under them and why some governments challenge liberal democratic assumptions.

Democracy should be studied as an extraordinary human achievement—not as history’s guaranteed destination.

World orders themselves are human creations: arrangements of rules, institutions and understandings that people construct and therefore can also alter or dismantle. (Cambridge University Press⁠)

Restore History to the Center

Perhaps the greatest curricular response to geopolitical uncertainty is surprisingly traditional: teach more history.

Students who understand the collapse of empires, two world wars, the Cold War, decolonization, globalization and the development of institutions such as the United Nations possess something invaluable—a longer perspective.

History reminds young people that the world they were born into is neither permanent nor inevitable.

And that may be the most important lesson schools can provide.

The purpose of education is not to predict whether America’s influence will decline, China will rise, alliances will fracture or a new international system will emerge.

Our responsibility is to prepare young people who can encounter whatever world emerges without being intellectually overwhelmed by it.

That means graduates who know history, understand other societies, recognize propaganda, evaluate evidence, tolerate ambiguity, defend democratic principles, engage respectfully with opposing ideas and change their minds when the facts warrant it.

Schools cannot determine the world order our students will inherit.

But we can determine whether they are prepared to understand it—and eventually help shape it. 

References

1. The New York Times. “World Order / International Relations.” The New York Times, Opinion, September 1, 2026. This is the source that prompted the article.
   
   
2. Zarakol, Ayşe. “Rethinking International Order.” Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 38, No. 2, Summer 2024, pp. 200–208. Zarakol argues that world orders are human-created arrangements of rules, institutions, and understandings—and that radically different forms of world order have existed historically and could emerge again.
   
   
3. Acharya, Amitav. “Thinking Beyond a Polarized World: Why Multiplexity Matters.” International Affairs, Vol. 102, No. 2, March 2026, pp. 503–511. Acharya describes an emerging world that is increasingly decentered, pluralistic, and post-hegemonic, rather than organized around a single dominant power—particularly useful support for the article’s argument that students need greater global literacy and comfort with complexity.
   
   

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com ;