Hello friend.
Welcome to the first-ever issue of the Maverick School Journal! Just in case you missed it, Teach Outside the Robot is no more.
Every fortnight, I'll continue sharing ideas at the intersection of education, technology, work and society—helping young adults, parents and educators make better sense of a rapidly changing world.
If you want to know more, I laid it out in this newsletter here.
Now friend, we need to talk about Jude.
Now the World Cup 2026 is over, and Spain has won the grandest prize of them all; we as a nation have come up with a multitude of reasons why England limped out of the tournament.
But Jude Victor William Bellingham isn’t one of them.
Although Harry Kane is the captain, Bellingham is the rock star.
I’ve been watching football a long time, and Bellingham seems to be the perfected Frankenstein’s monster of the best English players the country has ever produced.
The silky skills of Gazza, the box-crashing runs of Lampard, the engine room of Stevie G, the precision of Lineker with a sprinkling of the edge of Stuart ‘Psycho’ Pearce packaged in the body of a Love Island winner.
Capable of taking most games by the scruff of the neck and seemingly at times winning them single-handedly.
In this campaign, especially against Mexico and Norway, the lads would have been sent home a lot earlier
But there’s been a pattern in the media.
Talks of him being ‘disruptive,’ ‘arrogant’ and ‘aggressive’ are never far from the journalists' lips.
While I don’t excuse all parts of his behaviour (he’s 23 after all), in order to play at the highest level, you have to have almost unshakable self-belief.
Jude’s confidence and drive are very ‘un-British.’
But I saw an interview where Jude wasn’t his typical unflappable self. He was introspective and aware he has vulnerabilities, anxieties and worries as we all do. For once he appeared human – just a regular Brum boy who stumbled into Real Madrid.
In a revealing clip, Jude opens up and tells us that he isn’t always confident. He has self-doubt and anxieties like the rest of us mere mortals.
But his confidence doesn’t come from the absence of fear but from fully embracing it. Jude has accepted that he will fail, and he’s ready to put it behind him and go again. And I believe this skill in Jude Bellingham is what every young person in the digital era must develop.
The Old Map of Adulthood is Disappearing
Look at what's happening to young people in Britain.
• More than one million 16–24-year-olds were not in education, employment or training in early 2026—13.5% of the age group.
• More young adults are living with their parents. In 2025, 28.7% of 20–34-year-olds did so, up from 25.4% a decade earlier.
• We're having fewer children too. Births in England and Wales fell again in 2025, while the fertility rate reached 1.39 children per parent.
And while apprenticeships overall are growing, starts among under-19s have actually fallen.
None of these things has one simple cause.
But together they point towards something bigger.
The traditional markers of adulthood are becoming less reliable.
Job ➡️ House ➡️ Marriage ➡️ Kids ➡️ Career ladder
There used to be a map—even if life didn't always follow it.
Increasingly, young people are being asked to navigate without one.
Then to cap it all off society tells them that they are ‘weak,’ ‘entitled’ or that they are ‘snowflakes.’ Words are officially more dangerous than sticks and stones.
So if the game has changed, we need to operate off a completely new playbook.
When the Map Changes, Learn to Explore
This is the bit I'm genuinely excited about. The same technology disrupting traditional careers is also lowering the barriers to creating things.
A young person with a laptop can:
• Build a website.
• Make a film.
• Start a podcast.
• Sell a product.
• Learn to code.
• Build an audience.
• Create intellectual property.
All without the traditional gatekeepers telling them what they can and can't do.
Now with advanced AI, young people can create products and services that would have required a team of people and office space to do.
A couple of days back I spoke to a founder who said that he had two full-time employees that he replaced with Claude AI. As depressing as it sounds, remember we have access to that same technology too.
The UK is already trying to prepare for that shift. The government's AI strategy is pushing adoption and skills across the economy, while its updated Essential Digital Skills Standards now explicitly account for AI.
Friend, this is more than a job crisis – We’re living through an economic evolution.
Some doors are being bolted firmly shut. I’m hearing of fields like Graphic Design and Music Production being utterly dominated by AI.
But jobs like Prompt Engineers, Forward-Deployed Engineers and AI Ethics Leads are just getting started.
Young people are expected to unlearn, learn and relearn subjects in cycles of months.
I'm not suggesting every 18-year-old should sack off university, buy a ring light and become a TikToker.
Please don't send me angry emails.
I'm saying we need a broader definition of what a successful adult life can look like.
Employment matters.
But so might entrepreneurship, technical education, apprenticeships, freelancing, portfolio careers and digital businesses.
And probably several ways of making a living that haven't been invented yet.
Which brings me back to Jude.
The thing I'd love young people to copy isn't the swagger.
It's the agency.
Young people need the swagger to meet a Champions League triumph the same way we can endure a World Cup semi-final loss to Argentina. To keep on keeping on when the going gets tough.
Because we can't promise young people a stable economy.
Nor can we tell them exactly what AI will do.
And we definitely can't hand them a career map that's guaranteed to work for the next 40 years.
But perhaps we can help them build something more useful:
The confidence to keep moving when the map stops making sense.
And that's why the Maverick School Journal exists.
Every two weeks, I want to uncover the ideas, technologies, careers and opportunities changing the world around us—especially the ones the old rulebook didn't prepare us for.
Not to tell young people what their future should look like.
But to expose more of what's possible.
Because if the map is being redrawn, somebody needs to start exploring it.
I might have just the ticket if you want to learn more.
Last week I sat down with Eli, founder of This Food Bangz, to talk about a career path that barely existed when most of us were at school: becoming a content creator.
Eli has built an audience of tens of thousands, generated millions of views and worked with international brands and tourism boards.
But this conversation isn't really about becoming an influencer.
It's about the creator economy and the skills young people need to take advantage of it.
We talked about why some creators succeed while others disappear, how social media can be used to create opportunities rather than simply consume content, and why these skills could become even more valuable in the AI age.
If you want to understand where work might be heading next, this is a good place to start.
🎙️ Listen now on your favourite podcast platform. 😎👇🏾
Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep12-the-traditional-9-to-5-is-dead-content-creator/id1881678199?i=1000779712148
Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0FCDJDNiRhLYzkLCVFVnpd?si=QS17NgGkQMivC0OZQIr4Ig
Podbean
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-4yhy3-1b284c3
That’s it for today.
The next issue comes out on Monday 24th August.
Until then, take care.
Karl
