This morning, I opened the paper and read something that left me shaken. A 17-year-old Portuguese boy has been accused of inciting a school homicide in Brazil, where a young girl lost her life. He is also suspected of instigating animal torture and circulating child pornography online.

It’s hard to process that this could come from someone so young and so close to home. But what makes it even harder to accept is the silence that follows. Beyond the occasional discussion about teacher shortages, there’s little meaningful public debate about what kind of education our children need. Aside from the manufactured outrage around gender issues in schools, often based on false anecdotes spread by far-right agitators, the main concern I hear from parents is how to equip their kids to manage money and build personal wealth. Financial literacy has become the poster child of “preparing for the future.”

But what kind of future are we preparing for when we’re not teaching children how to be humane, critical, and responsible participants in society?

The real crisis behind the headlines

This horrifying case isn’t just an isolated event. It’s a symptom of a deeper societal illness, one that grows in silence and isolation. We’re raising a generation that is deeply connected online and yet profoundly alone. Many young people spend hours in unregulated digital spaces, exposed to extremist content, manipulated by algorithms, groomed by predators, and immersed in violent or dehumanizing ideologies.The fact that a Portuguese teenager could be implicated in such a case across the ocean should force us to ask: what are we really teaching our kids?

Financial literacy isn’t the enemy, but it’s not the Holy Grail

Let’s be clear: teaching children about money is not a bad thing. It’s useful. Necessary, even. But besides not being super hard to grasp if you’re curious enough, it’s also not exactly the backbone of citizenship. Especially if it crowds out the deeper, harder, and more essential work of preparing children to live in a society with others and not above them.

There is a worrying trend where education (formal and otherwise) is reduced to a toolkit for individual success. “How to get ahead.” “How to invest early.” “How to win.” But that only makes sense in a system where everyone else must lose. 

Worse, it neglects the reality we’re living in: one where mental health issues are rising, online addiction is common, and violence against women, minorities, and vulnerable communities is growing.

What kind of literacy do we need?

We urgently need to teach:

• Digital literacy: not just how to use devices, but how to stay safe, spot manipulation, understand algorithms, and set boundaries.
  
• Civic literacy: how to verify sources, understand political systems, think historically, and detect extremism before it grows.
  
• Emotional and ethical literacy: how to deal with frustration, how to connect, how to care.
  

We should be asking: are our children growing into people who feel responsible for the world around them? Or are they only being trained to survive it?

Parents and educators: we shape the future

This is not only a job for the State. Families and educators have enormous influence over how children interpret the world. We need to:

• Talk early and often about the internet. Not just rules, but values. What kind of content are they seeing? Who are they talking to? What is shaping their view of reality?
  
• Encourage curiosity, not just ambition. Ask kids what they think about the world, not just what they want to become.
  
• Model empathy. Children absorb the way we treat others, how we respond to difference, and whether we choose to look away from suffering, or lean in.
  
• Insist on community. School should be more than a place to perform and compete. It must be a space to build relationships, share responsibility, and learn how to be part of something bigger.
  

It’s time to broaden the goal of education

Education is not just about giving children the tools to “succeed.” It’s about helping them grow into people who will care when someone else is suffering, who will act when others are in danger, who will question cruelty and resist injustice.

If that sounds idealistic, then maybe we’ve lost the plot.

A 17-year-old in Portugal helped destroy a life in Brazil. If that doesn’t wake us up to the cost of ignoring social and civic literacy, what will?

It’s time to stop asking only how children can secure their future.
And start asking how they can help build a future worth living in – for all of us.