Introduction: EdTech as the Art of Human Becoming
Having taught over 300 college and law school courses online and onsite over the last 25 years, I have been actively engaged in education technology or EdTech for decades.
I suppose that I have taught over 10,000 students, from over 50 nations, in 25 years, and every class has been a joy for me to teach as it is truly a labor of love. During the course of my professional teaching career, I have cultivated some golden principles that apply to today as well as the future.
In the United States, roughly 18–20 million students are currently enrolled in 4,000 colleges and universities, making higher education one of the largest organized industry sectors in the country.
The higher education industry itself generates hundreds of billions of dollars annually, often estimated near $1 trillion in total institutional revenues when tuition, government funding, research grants, and auxiliary services are included.
At the same time, the system is deeply intertwined with debt: student loan balances now exceed $1.8 trillion, carried by more than 40 million borrowers, making student debt one of the largest categories of consumer debt in the U.S. economy.
With that being said, education is not the passive transfer of information, the accumulation of credentials, or the mechanical pursuit of testing outcomes. At its highest expression, education is the intentional cultivation of human potential —intellectual, emotional, ethical, creative, and practical.
True education awakens agency, clarifies purpose, and equips individuals to consciously shape their destiny while contributing value to society. Our nations success hinges on the degree of agency that the individual has for education, experience, expansion, and action.
While some of these principles reflect my own original insights, many are drawn from a futuristic synthesis of great thinkers across the ages.
They weave together timeless wisdom from philosophers, educators, and self‑help visionaries into a forward‑looking framework that unites intellect, ethics, creativity, and practical action. This blend honors the past while pointing toward the future of human development, EdTech, and traditional education.
Modern education must move beyond rigid bureaucracy and hollow standardization, yet avoid unstructured creativity divorced from discipline and results. The future belongs to educational systems that integrate freedom with structure, imagination with accountability, and inner development with measurable achievement.
The following 12 principles define such an approach and reflect a success-centered philosophy rooted in personal mastery, responsibility, and purposeful action.
The 12 Principles
1. Educate the Whole Human Being
Education must develop intellect, character, creativity, and action in integrated balance. Digital content, e-learning platforms, and AI-assisted instruction should support holistic growth—not reduce learning to screen time or information consumption. True success emerges when thinking, feeling, and doing are aligned toward meaningful productivity and goals. It is not about mere change, but rather authentic innovation and “CFG Change for Good”.
2. Cultivate Inner Agency and Responsibility
Learners must understand themselves as active agents, not passive users of platforms or algorithms. E-learning environments succeed when individuals take responsibility for self-paced study, disciplined engagement, and intentional use of digital tools to amplify judgment and initiative. Learners can bring experience and expand pedagogy which maximizes the exposures to class members’: experience, professions, culture, and global perspectives.
3. Respect Human Developmental Timing
Learning must align with natural developmental stages. Adaptive e-learning systems and modular online courses should personalize pacing without forcing premature acceleration. Ai will continue to help in assessment, placement, student needs, student focus, personality types, and student abilities. Mastery, confidence, and leadership develop best when technology supports—not overrides—human readiness.
4. Imagination Is the Precursor to Innovation
Every innovation begins as a mental model. Digital storytelling, simulations, virtual labs, and creative project-based learning within e-learning environments cultivate imagination as the foundation of innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic thinking.
5. Empower Educators as Leaders and Innovators
Educators are not content deliverers; they are designers of learning experiences . E-learning flourishes when instructors are empowered to curate content, mentor learners online, interpret learning analytics, and adapt instruction rather than merely manage platforms.
EdTech has begun to engage learning in real time with courses of dynamic information, rather than students studying old information, the texts and learning are providing real-time and up-to-date data.
6. Measure Success by Outcomes, Not Appearances
True accountability focuses on demonstrated competence and applied intelligence. Online education should emphasize outcome-based assessment, project portfolios, skills validation, and real-world performance—not course completion alone or passive attendance metrics. New EdAssessment systems will be able to monitor and progress much easier than before and matriculate students according to their best interests and strengths.
7. Discipline and High Standards Create Freedom
Self-discipline is essential in digital learning environments. Clear expectations, structured milestones, and rigorous standards—combined with flexibility—build autonomy, resilience, and professional readiness in both online and hybrid learning models. EdTech systems of adaptive assessment, predictive modeling, and psychometrics is the wave of the future.
8. Teach Deep, Coherent, Knowledge-Rich Content
E-learning must go beyond fragmented micro-content. Strong online education delivers structured, coherent curricula that integrate history, science, economics, finance, ethics, and critical thinking—ensuring depth rather than superficial consumption. Using scripts to create video learning with avatars using Ai, the quality and clarity of content, voice, images, lectures, disability accommodations, is extraordinary compared to just a few short years ago. SMEs Subject Matter Experts will still rule the final content for quality control, but the development time and costs has been cut 80% or more.
9. Use Technology as a Servant, Not a Master
AI, EdTech, FinTech tools, and learning platforms should enhance personalization, efficiency, and insight while preserving human mentorship and ethical judgment. Technology must support learning goals, not dictate them. Teaching kids to use the EdTech tools is imperative to the productivity and human capital of any nation.
10. Connect Learning to Real Life and Real Consequences
Learning is most effective when linked to practical application: case studies, simulations, modeling, leadership scenarios, and real-world projects. Traditional and online education must prepare learners for real decisions, risks, and responsibilities.
11. Treat Learners and Families as Stakeholders
Education and EdTech thrives on transparency and trust. Learners and families should have visibility into learning pathways, outcomes, and progress dashboards—participating as partners rather than passive recipients of content.
12. Aim for Self-Directed Success and Service
The highest goal of education—online or in-person—is to develop self-directed individuals who can learn continuously, adapt to technological change, manage resources wisely, and serve others with competence and integrity in a global digital economy.
Conclusion: Education as a Success System for Life
Education is destiny made deliberate. When designed correctly, it becomes the most powerful engine for personal success, innovation, social stability, and human flourishing. The future belongs to systems that cultivate inner mastery, disciplined action, moral clarity, and meaningful contribution .
As I have personally used scripts to produce video learning lectures with avatars using Ai, the quality and clarity of the movie production, content, voice, images, lectures, disability accommodations, sub-titles, and such is precise. SMEs Subject Matter Experts will still rule the final content for quality control.
Recently, I designed 2 college level courses in 1 day using AI technology and EdTech. These courses are offered for free to those in need by my company. With 4,000 colleges and universities in the USA, they should be mindful of this innovation.
However, there is one note on innovation. I still remember when many colleges spent millions on wiring their schools with Ethernet and cable. Then, within 2 to 3 years, most campuses were going wireless while saving millions in construction. The real question is focusing investment on content and learning and platforms that can be updated easily, or is not dynamic at all such as philosophy or history courses.
Overall, we are living in a future that is now. There are indeed timeless and perennial principles in education, but these concepts above are a hybrid of old and new. When learners are taught to master themselves, clarify purpose, and apply focused effort toward worthy goals, education transcends schooling.
It becomes a lifelong strategy for achievement, fulfillment, leadership, and service. These twelve principles form not merely an educational theory, but a success philosophy in action, capable of shaping resilient, capable, and purposeful human beings in any era.
_______________
Commissioner George Mentz JD MBA CILS CWM® holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD), and an MBA from ABA and AACSB Accredited programs. Mentz is the first in the USA to rank as a Top 50 Influencer & Thought Leader in: Management, PM, HR, FinTech, EdTech, Wealth Management, and B2B according to Onalytica.com and Thinkers360.com. George Mentz JD MBA CILS is a CWM Chartered Wealth Manager ®, global speaker - educator, tax-economist, international lawyer and CEO of the GAFM Global Academy of Finance & Management ®. The GAFM is a EU accredited graduate body that trains and certifies professionals in 150+ nations under standards of the: US Dept of Education, ACBSP, ISO 21001, ISO 991, ISO 29993, QAHE, ECLBS, and ISO 29990 standards. Mentz is also an award-winning author and award winning graduate law professor of wealth management of one of the top 25 ranked law schools in the USA and is founder of the ChE Chartered Economist ® certification & education programs. George Mentz has served as a White House Commissioner, and has served the Civil Service Commission for Police and Fire and the Airport Commission (Home of Space Force). Comm'r Mentz is one of the few lawyers who has ever earned Wall Street Firm licenses of Series 7,63, and 65 , served as a Judge for the ABA, has led civil litigation cases in fraud and defamation, as well as testified as an expert in FINRA/NASD financial arbitration.
Selected References (Books)
1. Ullrich, H. (1994). Waldorf Education: Toward a Holistic Pedagogy . Routledge.
→ Provides an academic analysis of Waldorf pedagogy as a holistic educational model integrating intellectual, artistic, and practical learning.
2. Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success . Random House.
3. Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success . Little, Brown and Company.
4. Robinson, K., & Aronica, L. (2015). Creative Schools: The grassroots revolution that’s transforming education . Viking.
5. Tough, P. (2012). How Children Succeed : Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
6. Waitzkin, J. (2007). The Art of Learning : An inner journey to optimal performance. Free Press.
7. Coyle, D. (2009). The Talent Code : Greatness isn’t born. It’s grown. Here’s how. Bantam Books.
8. Davidson, C. N., & Goldberg, D. T. (2010). The Future of Learning Institutions in a
9. Jarche, H. (2019). A Personal Knowledge Mastery . PKM Press.
→ Focuses on lifelong learning, sense-making, and skill development essential for modern careers.
10. Selingo, J. J. (2017). There Is Life After College : What parents and students should know about navigating school to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow . HarperCollins.
11. Wagner, T. (2012). Creating Innovators : The making of young people who will change the world. Scribner.
→ Identifies the skills, mindsets, and educational practices that produce employable innovators.
12. Trilling, B., & Fadel, C. (2009). 21st Century Skills: Learning for life in our times . Jossey-Bass.
13. Bridgeland, J. M., Dilulio, J. J., & Morison, K. B. (2006). The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of high school dropouts . Civic Enterprises.
→ Highlights why relevance, engagement, and real-world connection are critical to keeping youth on a path toward employment.
© 2025 Newsmax Finance. All rights reserved.