Elon Musk is known for many things; it goes from SpaceX to PayPal to electric cars – the list goes on. The man is a pioneer of many things, but were you aware this extends to school systems?
In 2014, Musk co-founded Ad Astra, a school for his five boys. Although it started with just eight students, the school now has 40 students for children whose parents work at Space X. There are no admission criteria for these children as long as they’re kind and eager to learn.
Here’s the exciting part: Children aren’t divided into different grades based on their age, but rather, they are put into teams, and the model is based on experimental learning. There’s no mandated curriculum, but children hone their unique abilities and talents instead.
An alternative learning model is adopted by teaching children problem-solving skills, making it more applicable to the real world than the typical memorization skills taught in your ordinary school.
We’ve progressed in many ways in the past 100 years. It goes from the invention of the internet to longer life spans to having electric cars – the world is not the same place as it used to be.
The Public Education system has been around for more than 150 years, initially made to churn children out to work in factories – it was a system that morphed children into agreeable workers, doing as managers tell them and showing up on time.
Technology has transformed the way businesses, medicine, and transportation function. As workplaces progress and put increasing value on creativity and independent critical thinkers, it is surprising that the school system remains the way it was 150 years ago, now unfit to prepare children to keep up with contemporary society. Its time there was a change in the school system.
It isn’t surprising to see Musk come up with this concept seeing how he “hated going to school” as a kid. He spoke of how the children at Ad Astra love going to school and find their vacations “too long,” which is certainly a good sign.
Unfortunately, Ad Astra isn’t available to the masses, so one of the educators at Ad Astra, Josh Dahn, joined forces with Chrisman Frank, an educational software developer, to create a school called ‘Synthesis.’ This school operates online and is “gamifying” education. Officially launched in November 2020, it aims to give children “the skills and agency to create the future they want.”
At Synthesis, children learn “how” to think critically, not “what to think,” and learn by doing through real-world simulations, meeting the next generation of innovators across the globe in the process.
