At thirty-nine, Mara had started learning again: soil science, because the river could not be understood without the soil. No one asked why she was doing it at thirty-nine. The course cost nothing, the enterprise gave her the time, and at the end her profile did not show a grade but what she could now do. That same year her daughter Ida, sixteen, sat in a class that was just learning to question every authority. Including the order she lived in. Including this book.
Imagine a world in which no child ever again has to say: I am not allowed to learn. I am too poor. I am too stupid. I am too old. I am too different. In this world, education is not a luxury, not a business, and not an instrument of power. It is a basic human right, as indispensable as water, food, and safety. That is the world this chapter describes, and at the same time the point at which it is decided whether an order forms subjects or people who can examine it.
Education as a Right and a Foundation
In SOLIS, education is a fundamental right, and this commitment follows from the insight that education is far more than the transmission of knowledge. It is access to information, the capacity for reflection, the possibility of development, and the key to self-determination, participation, and dignity. Without it, people remain dependent and vulnerable, poverty reproduces itself from generation to generation, and inequality is inherited. Whoever secures education thereby secures all other rights along with it. Whoever denies it takes from people the foundation of their freedom.
Access is free and without barriers. Every person has a right to education, and from birth, because education does not begin only at school but in the family and the community, and it does not end with a qualification but accompanies the whole of life. An expectant mother receives access to advice and learning materials. A young person with a disability receives learning systems that foster their strengths and offset their barriers. An older person can continue learning new languages, techniques, and subjects at no cost.
Because not everyone learns in the same way, the education system is adaptable. It takes account of different paths of learning, respects cultural diversity, and understands disabilities not as deficits but as variations of human experience. Digital platforms, shared learning spaces, and professional support ensure that content is prepared flexibly and tailored to particular needs. Artificial barriers fall away. There are no costs that reserve education for the wealthy, no admission barriers that make opportunities depend on origin and connections, and no discrimination that systematically excludes minorities. A highly gifted young woman from a poor household does not have to go into debt in order to study. A worker who wants to change direction at fifty is not blocked by bureaucracy. A refugee receives immediate access to language and learning instead of years in waiting loops.
All this is carried by a collectively supported educational infrastructure of schools, libraries, learning centres, and digital platforms, because education counts as a shared gain and not as a commodity. It belongs to the basic provision to which everyone is entitled. Its content is scientifically sound, ethically reflected, and presented in varied ways. From the outset, this draws a line to which this chapter will return: no indoctrination, no propaganda, and no dictation of “correct” opinions.
Lifelong Learning
In most societies today, learning is organized like a closed stage of life: first school, then training, then working life, and with that a person is considered finished. In a world that changes quickly, this idea is disastrous, because standing still means falling behind, and yesterday’s knowledge is not enough to solve tomorrow’s problems. SOLIS assumes that learning never stops. Not because people should optimize themselves without pause, but because learning is part of being human, an expression of curiosity, growth, and connection.
Every person therefore has lifelong access to a broad range of learning opportunities, to formal institutions as well as to informal formats and self-directed paths. A craftsman who wants to train in sustainable architecture at forty finds open courses and mentors. Someone returning after years away receives programmes that bring them up to date. A young woman with a rare interest works with researchers early on. Learning is neither a stigma nor a status symbol but a natural part of life. No one is smiled at for still learning in old age, and no one is excluded because their learning is informal.
For this to be possible, the world of work must promote learning instead of punishing it. In many jobs today, further training is a private burden without time and without means. In SOLIS, enterprises are obliged to make continuous education possible, working hours are arranged so that there is room for phases of learning, and new roles and paths arise through lifelong development instead of through a single qualification. An experienced care worker who wants to move into robotics is supported in this and not held back. Phases of learning are secured, because basic provision does not depend on paid work, so that no one has to go into debt for education. In place of the one qualification that decides about a person for a lifetime comes a growing profile of what they can do. Projects, experience, contributions to the community, and formal examinations count equally, and no door closes forever because an exam went wrong at seventeen. Thus a society arises that stays curious at every age and grows wiser and more adaptable together.
Access to Knowledge and Transparency
In the age of information, knowledge is more than power. It is the basis of survival, invention, and freedom. And yet in most of today’s systems it is not free but hidden behind paywalls, frozen in patents, hoarded in data monopolies, and instrumentalized by governments and corporations alike. SOLIS treats knowledge as a common good, not out of romanticism but out of necessity, because a society that shares knowledge is more resilient, more inventive, and more just.
To this end, SOLIS maintains open, multilingual, and barrier-free knowledge systems that make scientific findings, technical developments, historical sources, and cultural works accessible, supplemented by local knowledge centres, so that people without digital infrastructure have access too. A village community can thus draw on the same medical knowledge as a research laboratory, and a young person has access to the teaching materials of the best universities. What was supported collectively belongs to the community. Studies, data, and methods from publicly funded research are freely accessible, which multiplies inventiveness, avoids needless duplication of work, and creates trust.
The invention of individuals remains protected, but not at the expense of the public. As the economic order lays down, whoever invents receives recognition and a return from the benefit of their invention, while the invention itself becomes open to everyone after a reasonable period. In areas such as medicine, environmental technology, and basic provision, the public takes priority from the outset. An enterprise that develops an active ingredient is honoured for it, but in a health crisis the ingredient is open to everyone who needs it. Thus knowledge does not become a commodity but remains a life force open to all, an application of the transparency that SOLIS also demands of its own institutions.
Creativity and Critical Thinking
In many of today’s education systems, the hidden message is to take in what is given and reproduce it correctly. Conformity is rewarded, not deviation. In a world that is becoming ever more complex, that is not enough. A society needs people who see new paths, question old patterns, and look at problems from unfamiliar angles. SOLIS therefore understands education not as a store of knowledge but as a space for thinking and exploring, in which it is not only about the what but equally about the how and the why.
Even children therefore learn not only facts but methods: to analyse a situation, to recognize patterns and contradictions, to ask precise questions, and to distinguish between superficial and deeper causes. A historical event is not tested by rote but worked through: why it happened, what perspectives there were, what could have turned out differently, and what parallels exist with the present. Creativity is not considered a decorative extra but a core competence in art and science as well as in the economy and everyday life: the ability to connect the unexpected, to bear uncertainty, and to dare something new without fearing mistakes. An education system that works in this way does not fill vessels but lights a fire. It allows teachers to be challenged, lets projects fail and still be valuable, and measures not the ticking off of knowledge but the finding of one’s own solutions.
The Maturity to Question SOLIS Too
Here lies a commitment that is decisive for the whole work. Critical thinking that stops short of the existing order is not critical thinking but its opposite. Education in SOLIS therefore explicitly teaches people to question every authority, including SOLIS itself, its institutions, and its office holders. It gives people not only the values of the order but the tools with which to recognize whether the order lives up to these values, and with which it can be changed or abolished if it does not. Precisely here lies the strongest protection against any order hardening into dogma and against the manipulation of the public sphere of which the chapter on the order of power speaks. A population that has learned to check sources, compare perspectives, and question power cannot be ruled. SOLIS asks of its citizens not obedience but judgment, and thereby accepts being measured by it and, if necessary, rejected by it.
Ethical Education
At a time when technology, power, and knowledge create ever greater levers, it is not enough to treat ethics as a minor subject. A single person today can paralyse systems, alter genetic codes, or influence the lives of millions through supply chains and data flows. If these levers are operated by people who think only of themselves, the result is injustice and destruction. SOLIS therefore makes ethical education not a special programme but the foundation that runs through all areas.
Ethical reflection is built into every discipline. In the natural sciences it is about responsibility for the environment and for consequences, in economics about fairness and sustainability, in medicine about patients’ rights and fair access, in technology about the question of misuse. Every subject includes reflection on responsibility, and every project thinks through its ethical consequences and not only its usefulness. Whoever builds an application in class asks at the same time whom it benefits, whom it endangers, and what happens if it is misused. This education begins early. Even children learn to consider the consequences of their actions, to put themselves in others’ shoes, and to take responsibility, by drafting rules together, resolving conflicts, and talking about real dilemmas. And it makes ethical discussion normal, in schools, the media, and neighbourhoods, because a healthy society does not shy away from questions such as those about the good life, responsibility for future generations, and the limits of freedom, but needs them.
Education, Not Conditioning
This raises an objection that SOLIS takes seriously and does not play down. A society that shapes its young towards the values by which it lives is always in danger of letting education turn into conditioning, and formation towards maturity into training for docility. It is precisely this step that SOLIS refuses, because it would be the authoritarian move that the whole order fights against. The line runs at a single point. A society may educate its young towards the values that sustain it, but only in a form that preserves the ability to examine and reject these values. Ethical education in SOLIS therefore does not implant fixed “correct” convictions. It develops independent moral judgment, the ability to measure SOLIS too by its own standards. Formation that leaves people free is education. Formation that binds them is indoctrination. Only the first is compatible with the foundations of this order.
Global Knowledge Networks
The great questions of this century, climate, energy, health, peace, and technology, know no borders and require global answers. Such answers arise only when knowledge is freely connected across countries, cultures, and disciplines. In SOLIS, schools, universities, and research centres are therefore not isolated islands but part of a global network that shares data and methods, carries joint projects, and forms communities of learners and teachers across borders. A school on one continent works with a school on another on a reforestation project, combining local knowledge of plants, climate data, and technology into a model that works in both regions.
In SOLIS, “global” does not mean “Western” but diverse and mutually enriching. The knowledge that counts is not only that of the great universities but also that of Indigenous communities about ecosystems, of craft cultures about durable products, and of artistic movements about expression and change. A project on clean drinking water can thus combine advanced technology, traditional methods, and clever design into a solution that is adapted locally, usable everywhere, and culturally respectful. In this way people learn not only about other cultures but with them and from them, and the intercultural judgment arises that creates trust where others build walls. Knowledge thus becomes a global network of points of light that illuminate one another.