In a sunlit classroom in Portugal, thirteen-year-olds are arguing—about food waste. Not about who caused it, but how to solve it. Cardboard prototypes clutter the tables. A whiteboard is covered in arrows, ideas, and post-its. Their teacher listens quietly, offering no answers. This isn’t chaos—it’s choreography.
This is Ginásio do Empreendedor—the “Gym of the Entrepreneur”—founded by Francisco Serralheiro, an educator who believes schools should train civic muscles, not just minds. “We don’t teach entrepreneurship,” he says. “We train it, like a muscle.”
That metaphor captures a profound shift: what if schools stopped preparing students for tests and started preparing them for uncertainty? For collaboration? For democracy itself?
The Lost Blueprint for the Future
Nearly three decades ago, UNESCO’s Delors Report (1996) offered a revolutionary vision for education in the 21st century: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be. It imagined schools as ecosystems of creativity and cooperation.
Europe embraced the language of reform but not its architecture. Classrooms still revolve around memorization, exams, and grades. The civic and emotional dimensions of learning remain marginal.
Francisco’s classrooms bring that lost blueprint to life. In his “gym,” students learn by doing—not to impress the teacher, but to improve their world. “Learning to live together,” one of the Delors pillars, becomes tangible: empathy, teamwork, and accountability are built into the curriculum.
What the Numbers Keep Telling Us
Europe’s education systems are struggling to evolve. The OECD’s PISA results over the past decade reveal the same pattern: students score decently in literacy and math but lag behind in problem-solving, creativity, and adaptability. In 2022, only 24% of European 15-year-olds said they felt prepared for the future of work.
The OECD put it bluntly: “Schools remain optimized for repetition, not resilience.”
The consequences are more than academic. When young people learn to follow rather than to question, democracy suffers. The European Youth Survey (2023) found that only 41% of young Europeans feel traditional institutions represent them—yet 82% want opportunities to co-create change. The desire for agency exists. The training does not.
That’s where Ginásio do Empreendedor steps in. It turns classrooms into micro-democracies where students identify local problems, design solutions, and learn by building. Every mistake becomes a data point, not a disaster.
The Gym Model
At first glance, Francisco’s classroom looks ordinary. But one wall displays a scoreboard tracking not grades, but collaboration and empathy. Students work in teams coached by older peers. Every week brings a new challenge: reduce cafeteria waste, improve accessibility in town, design an awareness campaign.
Gamification keeps motivation high. Students earn collective points for teamwork and perseverance. The system mirrors how real communities—and democracies—work: your success depends on how well you collaborate.
The program now operates in more than 300 schools across Portugal. Projects range from peer-tutoring systems that collect food for local families, to intergenerational recipe books co-created with seniors, to campaigns raising funds for menstrual dignity. Each project is small but transformative.
Francisco calls them “civic prototypes.” Each one teaches a skill rarely graded in school: agency.
When Learning Feels Real
In one school, a group of students launched Mission 5: high achievers offered tutoring sessions in exchange for food donations that went to local charities. In another, a team built QuadraArt, a project that turned local traditions and recipes into art books, funding art supplies for their school.
There’s no theoretical exam at the end—only public presentations to city councils and community partners. Students defend their ideas to real audiences. That experience changes everything.
Teachers report something remarkable: discipline problems drop, motivation rises, and students who usually hide in the back of the room become leaders. In surveys, 90% of participants say they feel more confident in taking initiative.
Watch: Francisco Serralheiro at the Youth4Peace Final Conference
“We don’t teach entrepreneurship — we train it, like a muscle.”
Why Europe Needs This Kind of Learning
Across the continent, educators face the same challenge: schools still train for stability in an era defined by change. The World Economic Forum (2023) estimates that 44% of job skills will transform by 2030 due to automation and AI. The fastest-growing roles rely on creativity, empathy, and problem-solving—the very skills traditional schooling sidelines.
Francisco’s model anticipates this reality. His “gym” teaches students how to design their own paths through uncertainty. They learn to treat problems not as walls, but as design challenges. It’s not just future-proofing—it’s democracy-proofing.
As REDefine’s civic intelligence framework puts it: We don’t just need more coders. We need citizens who can code the future together.
The Mindset Shift Schools Resist
Most schools still operate under a 20th-century logic: error equals failure, success equals compliance. That model crushes curiosity and initiative—the foundations of civic participation.
The psychologist Carol Dweck calls it a “fixed mindset.” When children fear mistakes, they stop experimenting. When they stop experimenting, they stop engaging with reality. Francisco’s students learn the opposite: iteration is learning. Error is information.
Every project ends with reflection sessions where teams analyze what went wrong, what they learned, and how to improve. Failure becomes a democratic act—collaborative, honest, and forward-looking.
Education as a Civic Economy
Francisco’s classrooms also show that education, economy, and democracy are not separate systems—they’re feedback loops. When schools teach agency, economies become innovative. When they teach empathy, communities become cohesive.
A McKinsey Global Institute (2024) study found that companies hiring people trained in entrepreneurial and collaborative skills innovate 40% faster and adapt 25% more easily to digital change. These aren’t “soft skills.” They are civic infrastructure.
Schools like Francisco’s bridge that gap. They create the kind of citizens—and future employees—who can adapt, cooperate, and care.
What a 21st-Century School Looks Like
Imagine walking into a school that feels more like a design studio than a factory. Students move between project spaces instead of fixed classrooms. Teachers act as facilitators, not supervisors. Every subject connects to real-world challenges—climate, technology, social justice.
This isn’t utopian. It’s happening in pockets across Europe: in Finland’s phenomenon-based learning, in Estonia’s digital citizenship labs, in Portugal’s civic innovation classrooms.
These spaces share five principles:
- Purpose before performance – Learning must feel meaningful.
- Projects before exams – Knowledge is proven through action.
- Collaboration before competition – Shared success replaces ranking.
- Curiosity before certainty – Questions are the curriculum.
- Reflection before repetition – Growth replaces perfection.
Each principle is an act of democratic design. They teach students to think systemically, empathize with others, and embrace uncertainty—the same capacities democracy depends on.
The Heart of It
If democracy feels fragile, it’s partly because its foundations—schools—need an update. Europe doesn’t just face a political crisis; it faces a pedagogical one. When students are trained to memorize rather than to imagine, societies lose their ability to reinvent themselves.
Francisco’s classroom offers a glimpse of renewal. Here, failure isn’t punished. Questions matter more than answers. Students learn to see themselves not as subjects of systems, but as their designers.
It’s a gym for the muscles democracy forgot: curiosity, courage, and collaboration.
Read More
The full Substack essay—exclusive to paid subscribers—includes in-depth analysis of current trends and the model implemented by Francisco Serralheiro’s work , data on civic learning outcomes, and REDefine’s design framework for future-ready education ecosystems.
💡 Read the complete analysis → https://open.substack.com/pub/associationredefine/p/the-gym-for-future-citizens?r=6l8ed8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
🌐 *Learn more about Francisco Serralheiro’s work at *ginasiodoempreendedor.com
