Human Capital

One of the clearest and most important studies to be published on education, worldwide, in many decades. Human Capital provides both the diagnosis and cure to those trying to school us towards competitiveness, individualism, and greed – Danny DorlingUrgent and compelling, Human Capital is a rallying cry for a radically different kind of education system – one that puts imagination and empathy at its heart, and genuinely equips young people for the challenges ahead, instead of the current narrow joyless focus on ‘schooling’, where success is measured in money and status alone. A searing attack on the ‘education industry’, Standing’s latest book should be required reading for every education minister – Caroline LucasWith dazzling depth and lively prose, Human Capital chronicles the juggernaut of forces privatizing and commodifying the experience of education, which in turn is corrupting truth, social ethics, and civic virtue. But Standing’s book also suggests strategies by which we can revive education as a commons — through better systems of knowledge sharing, dialogical learning, collaborative creativity, vernacular practices, intergenerational memory-sharing, and more – David BollierGuy Standing is one of our great truth-tellers. We must listen as he argues for the creation of educated minds that can move us away from the competitive horror of what currently passes for schooling, and help create an intergenerational community where equity and democratic values are paramount – Sally Tomlinson

Guy Standing has held professorships at Bath, London and Monash universities, was a programme director in the UN’s International Labour Organization and has advised many international bodies and governments on social and economic policies. He co-founded the Basic Income Earth Network and is now its co-president. He is author of the bestselling The Precariat- The New Dangerous Class (2011), Basic Income- And How We Can Make It Happen (2017) and Plunder of the Commons- A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth (2019).