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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."
Honestly, we've had this current system for so long, would it really hurt to try another one?
And another thing, why is education literally never a talking point during elections? The only thing I can every recall from any president is that 'children are the future' and other such nonsense soundbites. There's never any actual change or reform.
I wonder why that could possibly be...
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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It seems a bit unfortunate not to try to expose students to the main store of human knowledge, but maybe that just isn't practical anymore.
My old college liked the adage: "learning how to learn". Perhaps if students are taught basic research and problem solving, they will be able to investigate other/general topics as needed or desired.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
I prefer grade level system where I could go by w/o doing any homework for quite some time. Sure I was not the best student since homework was 25% of the grade but I cherished all the free time I had to tinker with electronics and others.
"They cursed us. Musks, musks they called us. They cursed us and drove us away! And we wept, Precious. We wept to be so alone. (Fish, and we only wish, so juicy sweet.) And we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind."
It is an interesting idea but I fear it will work with a group of students that would do well anyway.
I really would rather see him dump money into an inner city school or even offering scholarships or loan forgiveness for teachers.
Most of the problems with education seem to be cultural and economic. Areas with successful parents tend to have successful students. The parents are involved and push the kids to do well. I just do not think that a "new way" of teaching will solve the root problem in the educational system in the US.
If the parents don't care only the small number of self motivated students will do well.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Montessori education has been doing this for many decades with excellent results. This is not a new concept.
It seems every time I hear the words "Elon Musk", my bullshit detector goes off. Education is complex because people are complex. It can't be solved by a billionaire with an ax to grind and some vague ideas about how to fix it.
This is pretty much how a lot of small private schools get founded. Rich dude and/or his wife decide they need a special school for their snowflakes, and they will it into existence. Other wealthy people pile on, and suddenly the wealthy dude's pet project has an endowment, a decade of history, some experienced teachers and finally, some of the upper middle class find that they can afford to put their kids through it.
So...what, exactly is the tech angle? (This has been going on for hundreds if not thousands of years.)
Back in the days I went two years(5th and 6th grade) to a small school on a island with a total of about 20 kids in grades 1-6.
There were further about 20 in 9-12 as kids from neighboring island came to the same school. (They had their own 1-6 grade school)
The school was organized so that the kids in grade 1-2 where in one classroom and 3-6 in other.
Some of the subjects were taught together regardless of what grade you were in, some others were more self study with teacher moving around to help as needed.
At that high teacher to student density and every student knowing everyone else so well, it was by far the best educational environment in my school times. We moved a lot so I went to a total of six schools through upper secondary (1-12)
So my view is really that for good schooling effect you need small groups and having overall small school size helps.
This is the natural way in which children learn in society for all of history...until perhaps the past 100 years...by helping to solve problems that needed solving in their family and community, taking on roles that were appropriate for their age and ability...much better than sitting down for rigid teaching lessons...at least for me.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Constructivist, free form, hands on education. It works for many students. This may have relevance because there are not some many things to take apart anymore. We are not on farms where things needs to fixed and children can observe, help, participate, then do it themselves. Hell, even cookies are bought prefab, at most you have to cut them. Kids do not see that if procedures are not followed, the cookies are not good. Even making a loaf of bread would benefit them. Even when I was a kid, you still had things you could solder and actually build, not just plug and play. That said, specific teaching methods for specific students is not the silver bullet for the making sure we pick out the students who are going to be tomorrows tech leader. Unless you are being very selective in the kids to get the top 1% motor skills of anyone under 10 is limited and they are not going to have a great deal of motor skills and the abstractions skills are going to be very limited. We see this in spelling bees. These involve a lot of memorization and a limited amount of abstraction. There is no cause and effect because applying the rules incorrectly does not guarantee failure. But it is an age appropriate way to predict future ability to accomplish high paid simple tasks. Likewise a Rube Goldberg machine is a great way to teach cause and effect to older kids, but again it is concrete. Because concrete is the where the kids are at. Development varies, that is why some kids can learn algebra at 10, and some can't even deal with it at 20, but when one is teaching algebra one starts with hands on concrete, and use the subject to move the student to a more abstract view. So, yes, if we are talking top students, this is a viable method to bring kids up to very high expectations by the time they are 13, but I think it might lack pedagogical validity. Like focusing on the ability to pass a multiple guess reading test. Resourceful kids will complete the task without ever learning anything.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
1. Change the laws that tie public school funding to the number of enrolled students so that schools only take a modest hit if they see a large decrease in the number of students they teach.
2. Abolish compulsory education.
I bet within a decade, you'd even see non-asian minorities' test scores in the inner cities shoot up as 50% of the "students" just walk out and the school waves goodbye.
Sure, plenty of kids and teens would not get educated, but they're probably not get anything now either. You can't make a student that won't learn educated anymore than you can make a morbidly obese person who refuses to eat right healthy. Sometimes society is better off with such people being allowed to make themselves into warnings for others.
. . . . complete with classmates. Since this is Elon Musk, at least we can be sure that any useful findings will be turned around into production as soon as possible.
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.
Translation: Wealthy low pressure school created for wealthy children who already have zero stress in their lives.
*click* Next article.
Call me back when you decide to use some of your billions to help the kids in Oakland or Redwood City, Musk.
for that system of education. Much research (which I can't cite) supports the techniques he is using. Perhaps all Musk is doing is to lend his name and fame to the promotion of the idea itself. Many people in the upper echelons of the education community, as well as the politicians who make the big direction decisions, are fad followers. If Musk can turn this well established education technique into "The Latest Thing" then maybe it will be adopted and accepted more widely.
Actually, it's closer to Montessori.
There's nine Montessori schools in the Los Angeles County area, so it's not like he couldn't have just paid for the kids to go to one of those.
There's not a lot of public Montessori's, however they are becoming more common (e.g. North Shoreview and ParkSide Elementary in San Mateo), but they tend to be Magnet schools, and there tends to be a lottery to get in because everyone wants their kid to get in. On the plus side, if you have multiple kids, once the older one gets in, there's a bump in the lottery for your remaining kids, and (A) once in, a kid generally gets to stay as long as the parent remains in the area, and (B) they don't totally screw up.
Frankly, if it's a choice between sending the kids to a private school, and building your own, and it's going to pretty much cost your the same for tuition either way, it's a hell of a benefit he's giving his employees (IMO).
So what is the cost/student ratio at his school for the super rich? How is that going to be applied to a class with 30 kids in it where at least some of them don't want to be in school and won't be told to behave because otherwise Mommy or Daddies boss will find out and fire them. Why not just skip this partial utopia and jump right to the Star Trek universe of no money, no janitors, and everyone working a their perfect fulfilling job. I think this is a great deal, just completely unworkable in a realistic population.
What is missing from the discussion is Musk wanted to make a "home, but not home-home" school for his kids and decided to rope a few other parents along for the ride.
Elon Musk didn't like his kids' school, so he started his own,
[...]
Ad Astra School is "very small and experimental," and caters to a small group of children whose parents are primarily SpaceX employee
[...]
Musk pulled his kids out of their school and even hired one of their teachers away to start Ad Astra.
[...]
http://www.businessinsider.com...
I am not sure if this is partial reaction from his youthful years being bullied in South Africa, or the private school his kiddos were going to did not live up to Musk's standards, but I would be critical of educational coverage and results.
Yes, much closer to a Montessori school than a country schoolhouse, although perhaps a bit more focused than I remember Kindergarten...
Elon on the fast track to developing more things that only benefit the already rich.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The problem is...
The problem is that there are tens of millions of children needing education.
A school teaching tens of children (that have been hand-selected to attend) may be heartwarming, but it's irrelevant by factors of millions. With sufficient resources, it's easy to teach ten or twenty students (especially if you're allowed to select which ones).
It's replicating that by a million times that's hard.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The astronomer in me agrees. Though the end of that burning sure is more interesting to see if it burns VERY brightly!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
that's amazing. we should scrap the public school system and rely on the whims of super-rich individuals to educate a handful of students.
They would be uncertain about gaming th college application system then. An example is that Disney tried implement an "innovative" school in their ECPOT Celebration town. But parents forced them to change back to a traditional school. These were better to do parents who could afford to live there.
Don't worry, proles won't be invited to attend.
Someone should stop this self-indulgent fuck with a fist to the head. An experimental extra class to trial an alternate approach is a great idea but potentially destroying a dozen kid's lives with a theory? Asshole. I did an experimental degree - a waste of my fucking time, my fucking money and about a decade of wasted oppertunitiy I could have used learning traditional skills like how to spell opportunity. Fuck you musk you're a piece of shit
How is this different to the old apprentice at 14/5 the problem was that you spent the first year filing and making the tea
Actually, adjusting the brightness of an incandescent lamp so that it's twice as bright cuts its life by about a factor of 10. That's assuming it isn't driven so hard that it burns out almost immediately.
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I am not a resource
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The first thing the new owners need to do is to start talking to the right people so they can overcome all the licensing BS that stops ThinkGeek from shipping all their cool stuff (Marvel, Star Wars, Dr Who etc) overseas.
Yes...yes you are. And the faster you realize that, the more prepared for the corporate world you will be.
Nineteenth century school houses had all the grades from kindergarten on up through the eighth grade (high school was optional) housed under one roof. The primer (kindergarten) kids sat in the front while the older students sat in the back. Somehow, one teacher was able to teach all these different kids from different books under one roof. I realize there are many more people nowadays and that makes small school houses impractical, but maybe there's something to be said for mixing different ages together. Let the older children help the younger ones with their studies, which will teach the older children responsibility and empathy, and the younger children can also learn proper behavior from the older ones.
I charge forward recklessly, leaving chaos in my wake.
The ideal learning environment:
- computerized
- allows a child to proceed at their own pace, faster or slower; the computer quizzes them periodically to see if they've absorbed the material instead of forcing them to sit down and do homework for x hours a night. quizzes encompass a rolling random subset of material to guarantee long-term absorption of knowledge, with no judgments for needing to be refreshed on older material.
- allows a child to learn about what interests them, within reason: "You've already spent x hours on subject A, you should spend more time with subject B and C."
- has a human proctor to help out if they have problems that the computer can't handle
- has experts on call for Skyping or whatnot, whether individual or group
- gamified testing to hold a child's interest (e.g. an RPG that requires solving riddles
- hands-on labs at all age and grade levels to help make clear why they're learning the material, how it can be both useful and fun
- professionally-produced videos instead of making teachers give the same boring lectures over and over, forgetting things sometimes, misspeaking, etc.
- grade levels should be per-field of study, allowing a child to be at various stages of development for any field (Math 6, Language 8, History 5, etc.)
- alternate physical education between fitness (jogging or running, swimming, strength) and play (games) with private showers