Two brothers who took their mother’s old Volkswagen van and traveled to schools all over the world to take the best educational ideas home. It sounds like a dream, but for Erik and Luuk Ex it’s daily reality.
Luuk is a research journalist who is most passionate about a good story that ends with a great paradox. Erik would love to be the new education guru in the world, but whenever he sees the best education he also sees its downfalls after a while. If he could have a superpower it would be being able to speak all languages of the world to understand everyone.
“We traveled from Finland, the educational miracle, to the former Soviet borderlands of Europe through the Middle East over the Indian Himalayas down to South East Asia to educational superpower Singapore”, Erik says. Erik wants to know where the best education in the world is. Luuk films the journey and interviews his brother on the way. “In twelve countries we stopped the van next to mountain ranges, river deltas and dense metropolises. In Finland we found pupils having a lot of free time and learning how to cook. In Ukraine school has become the frontline in a war while Georgia gets out of balance because schools in the mountains are losing pupils to the dense capital city. Turkey recently fired 40.000 teachers suspecting them of treason while Singapore is educating a generation to become the future’s world elite.”
As souvenirs, the brothers try to take the best educational ideas home. But that proves to be harder than initially thought. If there is one change the brothers would like to see in the world, it would be universal education that fits all students. “How? All children meet their peers, learn with them about the knowledge prior generations have already discovered and then discover some more themselves.”
Ninih Vang
Communications