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Throw away all of your preconceived ideas about the behaviour and nature of teenagers. New research suggests that without our turbulent teen years the human race would be, as Dr. David Bainbridge puts it in Surviving:) The Teenage Brain, "short lived and stupid." In the past, when we put the words selfish, reckless, irrational, irritable and impossible together we could only be describing one thing: the teenager - that odd creature that invades our homes for what seems like an eternity and tests the limits of our reasoning skills and patience. But what if teenagers are doing exactly as nature intended? Surviving:) The Teenage Brain looks at this critical developmental stage from a scientific and evolutionary point of view. The film combines cutting edge scientific research with YouTube clips of outrageous teen behaviour and a graphic novel approach to challenge conventional thinking about the adolescent years. It illustrates that our teens are doing precisely what they should be doing to finesse the development of their brains and ensure the survival of the human species.

The services provided by nature and the qualities that contribute to human well-being are still invisible in the marketplace. Because we have elevated economics above everything else, this is dangerous. When you have a society that largely equates the quality of life with economic indicators, such as gross domestic product, and those indicators fail to track the health of its fundamental inputs, you end up on shaky ground.

But some schools are way ahead of the curve. By using technology, giving students the opportunity to choose what they want to study, or even just allowing teachers to deviate from the curricula norm, these schools have already taken education to the next level and waiting for the ministry to catch up.

Distributed leadership and transparency needed in education and student leadership. It's time to abandon antiquated models of Prefects and Student Councils/Governments which promoted limited voice, action and impact.  Discussion by Mashable and OneYoungWorld inspire some thoughts in this direction and the role of social media and new models of social entrepreneurism