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Elon Musk Establishes a Grade School
HughPickens.com writes with news that Elon Musk has established "Ad Astra," a small, private school for grade-school-age kids. His goal for the school is to eliminate actual differences between the grades. The school had only 14 students for the past year, but will likely expand to 20 next September. Musk says, "It's important to teach problem solving, or teach to the problem and not the tools." As an example, he says teaching kids about tools should be more about taking an engine apart and learning about neccessary tools as the need arises, rather than just dumping information on them about a bunch of tools in an abstract way. "Musk's approach to delete grade level numbers and focus on aptitude may take the pressure off non-linear students and creates a more balanced assessment of ingenuity."
Well, if you let an egotistical billionaire run the education of 20 students, you will probably come up with awesome results.
But how much of this is applicable when it isn't being paid for by an egotistical billionaire?
You can say nothing about this other than ... highly focused, very expensive private education can be effective, but that this doesn't tell you anything about educating the rest of them.
You can't say this was better because you eliminated grades. This is a PR stunt, but it's not some revolution in education.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Elon just invented single teacher, country schools with low student numbers!
While I admire his ambition, any school system is going to improve if you bump the teacher/student ratio by a factor 2 or 3
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Honestly, with how important education is; it's probably better that it's more or less off the table. Let the educators teach, let the politicians do.. whatever it is they do.
Musk isn't a politician, and this isn't a new idea. The current, regimented-by-grade system was explicitly invented to train kids to be good little manufacturing workers (back when those were the bast jobs most people could get, it was a good enough plan). But before that, before we twisted the educational system into a manufacturing-job-training system, you didn't divide kids up by age like we do today.
The old way had the teacher directly teach the older kids an the age rage, who would then be responsible for teaching the younger kids themselves. This is a great system: you learn better through mentoring, you develop better critical thinking skills when the person teaching you is sometimes wrong, and you likely develop leadership skills along the way.
There may be a better system for the modern era, but the old-school (heh) system seems vastly better than what we have.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Some people might point to this as a good thing, but I disagree. When rich, influential people begin taking control over key aspects of our society, such as education, even small experiments like this run the risk of being trotted out as the antidote to all those evil government-run schools out there.
Look at political advertising pre- and post- Citizens United decision. Smart people can see though most BS that either side generates. However, the reality is that the masses are definitely swayed by political ads. Now, it's just a matter of who has the most money and can blanket people with their message. A lot of political advertising is "issue advertising" designed not to promote a candidate, but an ideology. Education sounds like a perfect place to get that message in early. (And yes, I'm aware that the conservatives will point out the evil liberal agenda that public schools have...anything that isn't American exceptionalism is an evil liberal plot.)
I'm not saying it would happen, but giving influential people access to educational institutions could just end up creating students in their own image.
Any change is for the better when it comes to the US school system. Not just the "three Rs", but things that have gotten lost in the shuffle to comply with the whip of standardized tests:
1: Critical thinking. A solid BS detector is quite important these days. Things like being able to read arguments, file them as red herrings, straw men, appeal to emotion, and other logical fallacies.
2: Situational awareness, and how to handle hostile people, be it a schoolyard bully, and later in life, a belligerent drunk, up to someone who is willing to take their life to take yours. We have a lot of people in the US who learn how to use a firearm from Hollywood or the record labels. Teaching that drawing the .45 is the last resort and not the first is good. A good school needs to teach conflict de-escalation and give pupils a "volume control" in handling conflict (as in when to use an aphorism versus an ax...) something never taught these days in schools. When my father was a kid, everyone in his class went to school with a firearm, and shooting a revolver or a rifle was as part of an education as learning algebra. This sounds violent... but the world isn't getting any safer, and being able to know how to handle a situation can not just save the student's life, but many people around.
3: How to teach others. This sounds strange, but part of leading and life is explaining to other people how to do something.
4: How to lead and communicate effectively. Not be a PHB, but someone who can get a job done right. Herding cats sucks, but it is a skill that should be taught, because everyone will be doing that at some point in life.
5: When to keep your mouth shut. You have people tweeting how many coils they pinched off in the morning, with Instagram-enhanced pictures of their creation. What needs to be taught is when to put something up for all to see forever, when to just keep silent, and when to discuss stuff offline.
6: Personal finance. This needs to be taught from grade school on up. Why one shouldn't get that credit card with the 79.9% interest rate (yes, there are cards out there with that), how to handle financial emergencies (unemployment, medical, arrest, etc.) Things like skipping college because student loans will never go away no matter how shitty the economy gets.
7: Military history and tactics/strategy. This by far is the most important part of history, because man loves war, so it is good to have those lessons learned once, rather than repeated time and time again. Might as well have people know how to deal with troop numbers, logistics, branches of the military, how police and military act, why calibers have changed during wartime, and other items. This may be useful knowledge later on.
8: Government and civics. Not just the basics of how Federal/state/local governments work, but actually going and seeing the sausage-making in action, or even being a part of it (page boy for a Congressperson), etc.
9: Basic science and chemistry. If only to learn lessons like not to heat closed containers, don't drink the stuff that has "4/4/4" on the diamonds, light farts in the fume hood, or lick the spotty petri dishes in the refrigerator. The goal is so graduates of this school can live a life without warning labels.
10: How to drive/ride vehicles. Sounds basic, but feeding back into situational awareness, being prepared and able to react fast on the road (regardless of what one is using) is important.
11: Outdoors skills. Basic first aid comes to mind. How to survive if lost in varying terrain. Combat medic skills. Even though it is highly unlikely someone will need to pull a bullet out of a live human being, having those skills, as well as CPR, are real world life skills.
12: Music/art/literature. Again, something skipped by public schools, but there is a reason they exist.
The overall goal would be to teach kids what they may face in the real world. A book education is important... but so is handling offensive people, dealing with emergencies, and dealing with nasty situations that might arise.