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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."
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.
When politics enters education, you wind up with things like "no child left behind'.
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.
The problem is, when you look at local taxes, there's actually a LOT of money in education.
http://www.usgovernmentspendin...
It's right there behind health care and pensions, both of which we've seen being raided by the politicians in the past few administrations.
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.
hard to see this as a PR stunt. he's revolutionized online payments, fired rockets into space and built the best car on the market (consumer reports + consumers)...don't think he needs the PR from a 20 person school.
i suspect he's just doing something that he thinks is cool and could help educate.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Sounds like a prototype. It takes a lot of money and effort to make the first one that usually only works under ideal conditions. The next step is to make it work every time (or at least more than once). You certainly don't want to start out with 50M users because there might be a fatal flaw (i.e. every complex problem has an obvious, simple, and wrong solution). How would you begin a program that eliminates something as fundamental to US education as grade levels?
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.
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.
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.
why is education literally never a talking point during elections?
Because you're talking about Federal elections, and education is funded and managed almost entirely at the state and local levels of government.
Lots of people, including Sen. Ted Cruz, think that "Common Core" is a federal initiative. It was developed by the National Governors Association and approved per state.
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.
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.
Having spent part of my time in a system set up like you describe... it's the *ABSOLUTELY WORST* thing you can do to a high achieving kid: take away their opportunity to reach even greater heights, in exchange for keeping them busy by becoming an unpaid teaching assistant.
Thankfully, it really didn't work out (having a 4th grader teach 6th graders math just gets that 4th grader beat up during lunch and after school), and they backed off eventually. Which was fine with me, because I was already working on calculus, organic chemistry, and college level reading that the bookmobile lady snuck me after doubling my number of books checked out quota over everyone elses.
If you want to go back to the "Little House On The Prairie"-style one room schoolhouse, good on you, but please do not drag high achieving kids back there with you, or worse try to "socialize them at their grade level", because I'm telling you, you might as well buy them a T-Shirt with a target on it.
Musk may not being anything new -- and he's really, reading the 3 articles, just describing Montessori with a couple of tweaks, like taking the grade level away -- but at least at his school I don't think you'd be holding back those who are able to vastly outpace the slower learners.
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.
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).
Perhaps the issue is trying to implement such a system within the current system.
I don't think further sequestering the "smart kids" from (presumably) "not smart" kids is a good idea -- unless you want to promote the idea of classes of people and, indirectly, the values of those classes to society. Smart kids need to learn that the alleged dumb kids aren't useless members of society, and dumb kids needs to learn that smart kids are just kids, too. They will have plenty of time to be smart as they get older, and this way they might be better people, too.
Also, you think that if we had smart kid school that magically those children would accept everyone in the school as an equal? It just isn't the nature of kids, no matter how much some adult (or system) tells them they are the same. Or in this case, better. And your rosy ideal would leave dumb kid schools in shambles, and parents with children right at the cusp outraged that one percentage point on some alleged standardized test has their child cast into the frying pan with the rest of the mushrooms.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Hey now, I am retired and I don't even take (I think I am old enough now - I have not looked to be honest) the Social Security that I paid in. I don't need it. I have plenty. They can keep their ransom money. They can spend it on someone else seeing as I paid a LOT in.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
Capital gains: only long term capital gains are taxed less than ordinary income, and much of that isn't real gain, it's smaller dollars ("inflation") used to price assets that have unchanged value. Additionally, capital gains on stocks are representative of corporate gains, which have already been taxed.
Similarly, inheritances are gains from a person's lifetime that have already been subject to a whole array of taxes, primarily income and property. You are claiming that there's something wrong with a person passing along the whole remaining product of his life to his offspring. That is naked evil.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Hmm... No. I am not quite there. I have about seven more years to wait. Either way, I still won't need it. It is quite probable that it is impossible for me to need it. I do not live miserly but I do not need to make any large expenditures and even a moderate amount of large expenditures are acceptable as interest is good and the tax rate is absurdly low on such. My big purchases these days are usually properties. I am surrounded by land that was owned and raped (has been replanted or grown back naturally) by the wood harvesters and paper companies of old. They put large chunks up for sale at very low rates (buying three acres is a lot different then buying 700) and I plan to leave the land to a charity with some caveats about the improved property and the use while also leaving a trust to ensure they can maintain and pay the taxes. At the end of this summer I hope to close on another chunk and then I will abut a State Park property. I think that will help.
I want the improved property to be used for either a library (not entirely logical however idealistic) or a residence for a licensed guide or a ranger. I want the access to remain public (I post it like people post no trespassing but instead I encourage people to visit with trespassers, hunters, or fishermen welcome) and I want to ensure that ATV/snowmobile use is still allowed/encouraged with stipulations that they are encouraged to remain on marked trails (old wood roads, often called tote roads around here) and that they take out everything they brought in. Camping, hunting, fishing, exploring are all encouraged now and that is why I bought the land in the first place - I wanted to ensure that there was a place for these things as so many folks buy the land and mark it with no trespassing signs. It is also a good investment should I change my mind.
I also don't want it named after me... I was lucky, 'there by the grace of God go I' is the adage though I am not a Christian or the likes, and do not deserve accolades. Instead I consider this repayment for my good fortune and a way to ensure I keep my karma levels topped off.
Sorry for the novella but this doesn't fit into a single paragraph very well.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Ah yes, wonderful public schools. Except in inner cities, where there has to be two adults in every classroom, so that the teacher isn't knifed in the back when she turns to write on the blackboard.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I feel like I owe an additional explanation...
I am an atheist and a Buddhist. The two are perfectly compatible.
I observed people coming into the area, "from away," that bought up large portions of property. This property has been used for hunting, fishing, and recreation for years by the local populace. They ignored this culture and marked the land as private with the appropriate legal signage and the likes... I find this deplorable and against the laws of humankind.
I have another post in this area if you refresh. It was in response to an AC (I do not mind but my comments are my own and I own them so I do not submit as an AC) and it may fill in some details if you are curious.
Also, I had not noticed your signature. I can see why you would agree with my beliefs about property. Legally I own the property. Given the size and my inability to possible have to use all of it for private matters it is against the moral laws to disallow access. While I may own it I do not have the moral right to block others from utilizing it in a responsible manner. I do not even mind (it happens a lot more than I expected but not enough to matter) if folks come in and harvest some trees (responsibly) if they are in a situation where they would be cold without them. Good forestry is good for the land, the animals, and the environment in general.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."